BEST OLUC 

ALEXANDER MXiINTOCK,D.C.M, 




Class " 

Book 



Copyright N?_ 



COPYRIGHT DKPOSrr. 



BEST O' LUCK 

BY ALEXANDER McCLINTOCK, D.C.M. 



"The Distinguished Conduct Medal has been 
awarded to Sergeant Alexander McClintock of 
the Canadian Overseas Forces for conspicuous 
gallantry in action. He displayed great cour- 
age and determination during a raid against the 
enemy's trenches. Later he rescued several 
wounded men at great personal risk/' 

Extract from official communication 
from the Canadian War Office to the 
British Consul General in NewYork. 



BEST O' LUCK 

HOW A FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN 
WON THE THANKS OF BRITAIN'S KING 



BY 

ALEXANDER McCLINTOCK, D.C.M 

Late Sergeant, 87th Battalion, Canadian Grenadier Guards 
Now member of U. S. A. Reserve Corps 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



UAflM?) 



n 






COPYRIGHT, I917, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



OCT 25 1317' 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

©CU4767i7« f- 



TO MY MOTHER 

MAUDE JOHNSON McCLINTOCK 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Training for the War . 1 1 

II The Bombing Raid 43 

III "Over the Top and Give 'em Hell" 75 

IV Shifted to the Somme . . . .101 
V Wounded in Action 123 

VI A Visit from the King . . . .153 



[viij 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



BEST O' LUCK 

CHAPTER I 

TRAINING FOR THE WAR 

I don't lay claim to being much of a 
writer, and up 'till now I never felt the 
call to write anything about my experiences 
with the Canadian troops in Belgium and 
France, because I realized that a great many 
other men had seen quite as much as I, and 
could beat me telling about it. Of course, I 
believed that my experience was worth re- 
lating, and I thought that the matter pub- 
lished in the newspapers by professional 
writers sort of missed the essentials and 
lacked the spirit of the "ditches'' in a good 
many ways despite its excellent literary 
style, but I didn't see any reason why it was 
up to me to make an effort as a war histo- 
rian, until now. 

[ii] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



Now, there is a reason, as I look at it. 

I believe I can show the two or three mil- 
lions of my fellow countrymen who will be 
"out there" before this war is over what 
they are going to be up against, and what 
they ought to prepare for, personally and 
individually. 

That is as far as I am going to go in the 
way of excuse, explanation, or comment. 
The rest of my story is a simple rela- 
tion of facts and occurrences in the 
order in which they came to my notice 
and happened to me. It may start off a 
little slowly and jerkily, just as we did — not 
knowing what was coming to us. I'd like 
to add that it got quite hot enough to suit 
me later — several times. Therefore, as my 
effort is going to be to carry you right along 
with me in this account of my experiences, 
don't be impatient if nothing very impor- 
tant seems to happen at first. I felt a little 
ennui myself at the beginning. But that was 
certainly one thing that didn't annoy me 
later. 

In the latter part of October, 1915, I de- 

[12] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



cided that the United States ought to be 
fighting along with England and France on 
account of the way Belgium had been 
treated, if for no other reason. As there 
seemed to be a considerable division of opin- 
ion on this point among the people at home, 
I came to the conclusion that any man who 
was free, white, and twenty-one and felt as 
I did, ought to go over and get into it single- 
handed on the side where his convictions led 
him, if there wasn't some particular reason 
why he couldn't Therefore, I said good- 
by to my parents and friends in Lexington, 
and started for New York with the idea of 
sailing for France, and joining the Foreign 
Legion of the French Army. 

A couple of nights after I got to New York 
I fell into conversation in the Knickerbocker 
bar with a chap who was in the reinforce- 
ment company of Princess Pat's regiment of 
the Canadian forces. After my talk with 
him, I decided to go up to Canada and look 
things over. I arrived at the Windsor Ho- 
tel, in Montreal, at eight o'clock in the 
morning, a couple of days later, and at ten 

[13] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



o'clock the same morning I was sworn in as 
a private in the Canadian Grenadier 
Guards, Eighty-seventh Overseas Battalion, 
Lieut.-Col. F. S. Meighen, Commanding. 

They were just getting under way mak- 
ing soldiers out of the troops I enlisted 
with, and discipline was quite lax. They 
at once gave me a week's leave to come 
down to New York, and settle up some 
personal affairs, and I overstayed it five 
days. All that my company commander 
said to me when I got back was that I 
seemed to have picked up Canadian habits 
very quickly. At a review one day in our 
training camp, I heard a Major say: 

"Boys, for God's sake don't call me Harry 
or spit in the ranks. Here comes the Gen- 
eral!" 

We found out eventually that there was a 
reason for the slackness of discipline. The 
trouble was that men would enlist to get 
$1.10 a day without working for it, and 
would desert as soon as any one made it un- 
pleasant for them. Our officers knew what 
they were about. Conditions changed in- 
to] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



stantly we went on ship-board. Discipline 
tightened up on us like a tie-rope on a colt. 

We trained in a sort of casual, easy way 
in Canada from November 4th to the fol- 
lowing April. We had a good deal of trou- 
ble keeping our battalion up to strength, and 
I was sent out several times with other "non- 
coms" on a recruiting detail. 

Aside from desertions, there were rea- 
sons why we couldn't keep our quota. 
The weeding out of the physically un- 
fit brought surprising and extensive re- 
sults. Men who appeared at first amply 
able to stand "the game" were unable to 
keep up when the screw was turned. Then, 
also, our regiment stuck to a high physical 
standard. Every man must be five feet ten, 
or over. Many of our candidates failed on 
the perpendicular requirement only. How- 
ever, we were not confined to the ordinary 
rule in Canada, that recruits must come 
from the home military district of the bat- 
talion. We were permitted to recruit 
throughout the Dominion, and thus we 
gathered quite a cosmopolitan crowd. The 

[15] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



only other unit given this privilege of Do- 
minion-wide recruiting was the P. P. C. 
L. I. (Princess Patricia's Canadian Light 
Infantry), the first regiment to go over- 
seas from Canada, composed largely of vet- 
erans of the South African and other colo- 
nial wars. We felt a certain emulation 
about this veteran business and voiced it in 
our recruiting appeals. We assured our pro- 
spective "rookies" that we were just as first- 
class as any of them. On most of our recruit- 
ing trips we took a certain corporal with us 
who had seen service in France with a Mon- 
treal regiment and had been invalided home. 
He was our star speaker. He would mount a 
box or other improvised stand and describe 
in his simple, soldierly way the splendid 
achievements of the comrades who had gone 
over ahead of us, and the opportunities for 
glory and distinction awaiting any brave man 
who joined with us. When he described 
his experiences there was a note of com- 
pelling eloquence and patriotic fervor in 
his remarks which sometimes aroused the 
greatest enthusiasm. Often he was cheered 

[16] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



as a hero and carried on men's shoulders 
from the stand, while recruits came forward 
in flocks and women weepingly bade them 
go on and do their duty. I learned, after- 
wards that this corporal had been a cook, 
had never been within twenty miles of the 
front line, and had been invalided home for 
varicocele veins. He served us well; but 
there was a man who was misplaced, in vo- 
cation and geography. He should have been 
in politics in Kentucky. 

While we were in the training camp at St. 
Johns, I made the acquaintance of a young 
Canadian who became my "pal." He was 
Campbell Macfarlane, nephew of George 
Macfarlane, the actor who is so well known 
on the American musical stage. He was a 
sergeant. When I first knew him, he was 
one of the most delightful and amusing 
young fellows you could imagine. 

The war changed him entirely. He be- 
came extremely quiet and seemed to be 
borne down with the sense of the terrible 
things which he saw. He never lost the 
good-fellowship which was inherent in him, 

[i7l 



BEST 0' LUCK 



and was always ready to do anything to 
oblige one, but he formed the habit of sit- 
ting alone and silent, for hours at a time, 
just thinking. It seemed as if he had a pre- 
monition about himself, though he never 
showed fear and never spoke of the dangers 
we were going into, as the other fellows did. 
He was killed in the Somme action in which 
I was wounded. 

I'm not much on metaphysics and it is 
difficult for me to express the thought I 
would convey here. I can just say, as I 
would if I were talking to a pal, that I have 
often wondered what the intangible mental 
or moral quality is that makes men think 
and act so differently to one another when 
confronted by the imminent prospect of sud- 
den death. Is it a question of will power — 
of imagination, or the lack of it — of some- 
thing that you can call merely physical cour- 
age — or what? Take the case of Macfar- 
lane : In action he was as brave as they make 
them, but, as I have said before, the prospect 
of sudden death and the presence of death 
and suffering around him changed him ut- 

[18] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



terly. From a cheerful, happy lad he was 
transformed into an old man, silent, gloomy 
and absent-minded except for momentary 
flashes of his old spirit which became less 
and less frequent as the time for his own end 
drew nearer. 

There was another chap with us from a 
little town in Northern Ontario. While in 
Canada and England he was utterly worth- 
less ; always in trouble for being absent with- 
out leave, drunk, late on parade, or some- 
thing else. I think he must, at one time or an- 
other, have been charged with every offense 
possible under the K. R.&O. (King's Regu- 
lations and Orders). On route marches he 
was constantly "falling out." I told him, 
one day when I was in command of a pla- 
toon, that he ought to join the Royal Flying 
Corps. Then he would only have to fall out 
once. He said that he considered this a very 
good joke and asked me if I could think of 
anything funny in connection with being ab- 
sent without leave — which he was, that 
night. In France, this chap was worth ten 
ordinary men. He was always cheerful, al- 

[19] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



ways willing and prompt in obeying orders, 
ready to tackle unhesitatingly the most un- 
pleasant or the most risky duty, and the hot- 
ter it was the better he liked it. He came 
out laughing and unscathed from a dozen 
tight places where it didn't seem possible 
for him to escape. To use a much-worn 
phrase, he seemed to bear a charmed life. 
I'll wager my last cent that he never gets an 
"R. I. P." — which they put on the cross 
above a soldier's grave, and which the Tom- 
mies call "Rise If Possible." Then there 
was a certain sergeant who was the best in- 
structor in physical training and bayonet 
fighting in our brigade and who was as fine 
and dashing a soldier in physique and car- 
riage as you ever could see. When he got 
under fire he simply went to pieces. On our 
first bombing raid he turned and ran back 
into our own barbed wire, and when he was 
caught there acted like a madman. He was 
given another chance but flunked worse than 
ever. I don't think he was a plain 
coward. There was merely something 
wrong with his nervous system. He just 

f20l 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



didn't have the "viscera." Now he 
is back of the lines, instructing, and will 
never be sent to the trenches again. We had 
an officer, also, who was a man of the great- 
est courage, so far as sticking where he be- 
longed and keeping his men going ahead 
might be concerned, but every time he heard 
a big shell coming over he was seized with 
a violent fit of vomiting. I don't know what 
makes men brave or cowardly in action, and 
I wouldn't undertake to say which quality 
a man might show until I saw him in action, 
but I do know this : If a man isn't frightened 
when he goes under fire, it's because he lacks 
intelligence. He simply must be frightened 
if he has the ordinary human attributes. 
But if he has what we call physical courage 
he goes on with the rest of them. Then if 
he has extraordinary courage he may go on 
where the rest of them won't go. I should 
say that the greatest fear the ordinary man 
has in going into action is the fear that he 
will show that he is afraid — not to his offi- 
cers, or to the Germans, or to the folks back 
home, but to his mates; to the men with 

[21] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



whom he has laughed and scoffed at danger. 

It's the elbow-to-elbow influence that car- 
ries men up to face machine guns and gas. 
A heroic battalion may be made up of units 
of potential cowards. 

At the time when Macfarlane was given 
his stripes, I also was made a sergeant on 
account of the fact that I had been at school 
in the Virginia Military Institute. That is, 
I was an acting sergeant. It was explained 
to me that my appointment would have to 
be confirmed in England, and then recon- 
firmed after three months' service in France. 
Under the regulations of the Canadian 
forces, a non-commissioned officer, after 
final confirmation in his grade, can be re- 
duced to the ranks only by a general court- 
martial, though he can escape a court-mar- 
tial, when confronted with charges, by re- 
verting to the ranks at his own request. 

Forty- two hundred of us sailed for Eng- 
land on the Empress of Britain, sister ship 
to the Empress of Ireland, which was sunk 
in the St. Lawrence River. The steamer 
was, of course, very crowded and uncom- 

[22] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



fortable, and the eight-day trip across was 
most unpleasant. We had tripe to eat until 
we were sick of the sight of it. A sergeant 
reported one morning, "eight men and 
twenty-two breakfasts, absent." There were 
two other troop ships in our convoy, the 
Baltic and the Metagama. A British cruiser 
escorted us until we were four hundred 
miles off the coast of Ireland ; then each ship 
picked up a destroyer which had come out 
to meet her. At that time, a notice was 
posted in the purser's office informing us 
that we were in the war zone, and that 
the ship would not stop for anything, 
even for a man overboard. That day a sol- 
dier fell off the Metagama with seven hun- 
dred dollars in his pocket, and the ship never 
even hesitated. They left him where he had 
no chance in the world to spend his money. 

Through my training in the V. M. I., I 
was able to read semaphore signals, and I 
caught the message from the destroyer 
which escorted us. It read : 

"Each ship for herself now. Make a 
break I" 



[*3l 



BEST 0' LUCK 



We beat the other steamers of our convoy 
eight hours in getting to the dock in Liver- 
pool, and, according to what seemed to be 
the regular system of our operations at that 
time, we were the last to disembark. 

The majority of our fellows had never 
been in England before, and they looked on 
our travels at that time as a fine lark. Every- 
body cheered and laughed when they dusted 
off one of those little toy trains and brought 
it up to take us away in it. After we were 
aboard of it, we proceeded at the dizzy rate 
of about four miles an hour, and our regu- 
lar company humorist — no company is com- 
plete without one — suggested that they were 
afraid, if they went any faster, they might 
run off of the island before they could stop. 
We were taken to Bramshott camp, in 
Hampshire, twelve miles from the Alder- 
shott School of Command. The next day 
we were given "King's leave" — eight days 
with free transportation anywhere in the 
British Isles. It is the invariable custom 
to give this sort of leave to all colonial troops 
immediately upon their arrival in England. 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



However, in our case, Ireland was barred. 
Just at that time, Ireland was no place for 
a newly arrived Canadian looking for sport. 

Our men followed the ordinary rule of 
soldiers on leave. About seventy-five per 
cent, of them wired in for extensions and 
more money. About seventy-four per cent, 
received peremptorily unfavorable replies. 
The excuses and explanations which came 
in kept our officers interested and amused 
for some days. One man — who got leave — 
sent in a telegram which is now framed and 
hung on the wall of a certain battalion or- 
derley's room. He telegraphed: 

"No one dead. No one ill. Got plenty 
of money. Just having a good time. Please 
grant extension." 

After our leave, they really began to make 
soldiers of us. We thought our training in 
Canada had amounted to something. We 
found out that we might as well have been 
playing croquet. We learned more the first 
week of our actual training in England than 
we did from November to April in Canada. 
I make this statement without fear that any 

[25] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



officer or man of the Canadian forces alive 
to-day will disagree with me, and I submit 
it for the thoughtful consideration of the 
gentlemen who believe that our own armies 
can be prepared for service here at home. 

The sort of thing that the President is up 
against at Washington is fairly exemplified 
in what the press despatches mention as "ob- 
jections on technical grounds" of the 
"younger officers of the war college," to the 
recommendations w r hich General Pershing 
has made as to the reorganization of the 
units of our army for service in Europe. 

The extent of the reorganization which 
must be made in pursuance of General 
Pershing's recommendations is not apparent 
to most people. Even our best informed 
militia officers do not know how funda- 
mentally different the organization of Euro- 
pean armies is to that which has existed in 
our own army since the days when it was 
established to suit conditions of the Civil 
War. But the officers of our regular army 
realize what the reorganization would 
mean and some of them rise to oppose it for 

[26] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



fear it may jeopardize their seniority or 
promotion or importance. But they'll have 
to come to it. The Unites States army can 
not operate successfully in France unless its 
units are convenient and similar multiples 
to those in the French and British armies. 
It would lead to endless confusion and diffi- 
culty if we kept the regiment as our field 
unit while our allies have the battalion as 
their field unit. 

There are but unimportant differences in 
the unit organization of the French, British 
and Canadian forces. The British plan of 
organization is an examplar of all, and it is 
what we must have in our army. There is 
no such thing in the British army as an 
established regimental strength. A battal- 
ion numbers 1,500 men, but there is no limit 
to the number of battalions which a regi- 
ment may have. The battalion is the field 
unit. There are regiments in the British 
army which have seven battalions in the 
field. Each battalion is commanded by a 
lieutenant-colonel. All full colonels either 
do staff duty or act as brigaders. There 

[27] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



are five companies of 250 men each in every 
battalion. That is, there are four regular 
companies of 250 men each, and a head- 
quarters company of approximately that 
strength. Each company is commanded by 
a major, with a captain as second in com- 
mand, and four lieutenants as platoon com- 
manders. There are no second lieuten- 
ants in the Canadian forces, though 
there are in the British and French. The 
senior major of the battalion commands 
the headquarters company, which in- 
cludes the transport, quartermaster's staff, 
paymaster's department (a paymaster and 
four clerks), and the headquarters staff (a 
captain adjutant and his non-commissioned 
staff). Each battalion has, in addition to 
its full company strength, the following 
"sections" of from 30 to 75 men each, and 
each commanded by a lieutenant: bombers, 
scouts and snipers, machine gunners and sig- 
nallers. There is also a section of stretcher- 
bearers, under the direct command of the 
battalion surgeon, who ranks as a major. 
In the United States army a battalion is corn- 
el 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



manded by a major. It consists merely of 
four companies of 1 12 men each, with a cap- 
tain and two lieutenants to each company. 

As I have said, a British or French bat- 
talion has four ordinary companies of 250 
men each and the headquarters company 
of special forces approximating that num- 
ber of men. Instead of one major it has six, 
including the surgeon. It has seven cap- 
tains, including the paymaster, the adjutant 
and the quartermaster. It has twenty lieu- 
tenants, including the commanders of spe- 
cial "sections." You can imagine what con- 
fusion would be likely to occur in substitut- 
ing a United States force for a French or 
English force, with these differences of 
organization existing. 

In this war, every man has got to be a 
specialist. He's got to know one thing bet- 
ter than anybody else except those who have 
had intensive instruction in the same branch. 
And besides that, he's got to have effective 
general knowledge of all the specialties in 
which his fellow soldiers have been particu- 
larly trained. I can illustrate this. Imme- 

[29] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



diately upon our return from first leave in 
England, we were divided into sections for 
training in eight specialties. They were: 
Bombing, sniping, scouting, machine-gun 
fighting, signalling, trench mortar opera- 
tion, bayonet fighting, and stretcher-bear- 
ing. I was selected for special training in 
bombing, probably because I was supposed, 
as an American and a baseball player, to be 
expert in throwing. With the other men 
picked for training in the same specialty, I 
was sent to Aldershott, and there, for three 
weeks, twelve hours a day, I threw bombs, 
studied bombs, read about bombs, took 
bombs to pieces and put them together 
again, and did practically everything else 
that you would do with a bomb, except 
eat it. 

Then I was ordered back along with the 
other men who had gained this intimate 
acquaintance with the bomb family, and 
we were put to work teaching the entire 
battalion all that we had learned. When 
we were not teaching, we were under in- 
struction ourselves by the men who had 

[30] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



taken special training in other branches. 
Also, at certain periods of the day, we had 
physical training and rifle practice. Up to 
the time of our arrival in England, inten- 
sive training had been merely a fine phrase 
with us. During our stay there, it was a 
definite and overpowering fact. Day and 
night we trained and day and night it rained. 
At nine o'clock, we would fall into our 
bunks in huts which held from a half to a 
whole platoon — from thirty to sixty men — 
and drop into exhausted sleep, only to turn 
out at 5 A.M. to give a sudden imitation 
of what we would do to the Germans if 
they sneaked up on us before breakfast in 
six inches of mud. Toward the last, when 
we thought we had been driven to the limit, 
they told us that we were to have a period 
of real, intensive training to harden us for 
actual fighting. They sent us four imperial 
drill sergeants from the British Grenadier 
Guards, the senior foot regiment of the 
British army, and the one with which we 
were affiliated. 

It would be quite unavailing for me to 

[31] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



attempt to describe these drill sergeants. 
The British drill sergeant is an institution 
which can be understood only through per- 
sonal and close contact. If he thinks a 
major-general is wrong, he'll tell him so on 
the spot in the most emphatic way, but with- 
out ever violating a single sacred tradition 
of the service. The sergeants, who took us 
in charge to put the real polish on our 
training, had all seen from twenty to twenty- 
five years of service. They had all been 
through the battles of Mons and the Marne, 
and they had all been wounded. They were 
perfect examples of a type. One of them 
ordered all of our commissioned officers, 
from the colonel down, to turn out for rifle 
drill one day, and put them through the 
manual of arms while the soldiers of the 
battalion stood around, looking on. 

"Gentlemen," said he, in the midst of 
the drill, "when I see you handle your 
rifles I feel like falling on my knees 
and thanking God that we've got a 
navy." 

On June 2d, after the third battle of 

[32] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



Ypres, while Macfarlane and I were sitting 
wearily on our bunks during an odd hour 
in the afternoon when nobody had thought 
of anything for us to do, a soldier came in 
with a message from headquarters which 
put a sudden stop to the discussion we were 
having about the possibility of getting leave 
to go up to London. The message was that 
the First, Second and Third divisions of the 
Canadians had lost forty per cent, of their 
men in the third fight at Ypres and that 
three hundred volunteers were wanted from 
each of our battalions to fill up the gaps. 

"Forty per cent.," said Macfarlane, get- 
ting up quickly. "My God, think of it! 
Well, I'm off to tell 'em I'll go." 

I told him I was with him, and we started 
for headquarters, expecting to be received 
with applause and pointed out as heroic ex- 
amples. We couldn't even get up to give in 
our names. The whole battalion had gone 
ahead of us. They heard about it first. That 
was the spirit of the Canadians. It was 
about this time that a story went 'round con- 
cerning an English colonel who had been 

[33] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



called upon to furnish volunteers from his 
outfit to replace casualties. He backed his 
regiment up against a barrack wall and said : 

"Now, all who don't want to volunteer, 
step three paces to the rear. M 

In our battalion, sergeants and even offi- 
cers offered to go as privates. Our volun- 
teers went at once, and we were re-enforced 
up to strength by drafts from the Fifth 
Canadian division, which was then forming 
in England. 

In July, when we were being kept on the 
rifle ranges most of the time, all leave was 
stopped, and we were ordered to hold our- 
selves in readiness to go overseas. In the 
latter part of the month, we started. We 
sailed from Southampton to Havre on a big 
transport, escorted all the way by destroyers. 
As we landed, we got our first sight of the 
harvest of war. A big hospital on the quay 
was filled with wounded men. We had 
twenty-four hours in what they called a 
"rest camp." We slept on cobble stones in 
shacks which were so utterly comfortless 
that it would be an insult to a Kentucky 

[34] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



thoroughbred to call them stables. Then we 
were on the way to the Belgian town of 
Poperinghe, which is one hundred and fifty 
miles from Havre and was, at that time, the 
rail head of the Ypres salient. We made the 
trip in box cars which were marked in 
French: "Eight horses or forty men," and 
we had to draw straws to decide who should 
lie down. 

We got into Poperinghe at 7 A. M., 
and the scouts had led us into the front 
trenches at two the next morning Our posi- 
tion was to the left of St. Eloi and was known 
as "The Island," because it had no support 
on either side On the left, were the Yser 
Canal and the bluff which forms its bank. 
On the right were three hundred yards of 
battered-down trenches which had been re- 
built twice and blown in again each time by 
the German guns. For some reason, which 
I never quite understood, the Germans 
were able to drop what seemed a tolerably 
large proportion of the output of the Krupp 
works on this particular spot whenever they 
wanted to. Our high command had con- 

[35] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



eluded that it was untenable, and so we, on 
one side of it, and the British on the other, 
had to just keep it scouted and protect our 
separate flanks. Another name they had 
for that position was the "Bird Cage." That 
was because the first fellows who moved into 
it made themselves nice and comfy and put 
up wire nettings to prevent any one from 
tossing bombs in on them. Thus, when the 
Germans stirred up the spot with an accu- 
rate shower of "whiz-bangs" and "coal- 
boxes," the same being thirteen-pounders 
and six-inch shells, that wire netting pre- 
sented a spectacle of utter inadequacy which 
hasn't been equalled in this war. 

They called the position w T hich we were 
assigned to defend "The Graveyard of Can- 
ada." That was because of the fearful 
losses of the Canadians here in the second 
battle of Ypres, from April 21, to June 1, 
1915, when the first gas attack in the world's 
history was launched by the Germans, and, 
although the French, on the left, and the 
British, on the right, fell back, the Cana- 
dians stayed where they were put. 

[36] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



Right here I can mention something 
which will give you an idea why descrip- 
tions of this war don't describe it. During 
the first gas attack, the Canadians, choking to 
death and falling over each other in a fight 
against a new and unheard-of terror in war- 
fare, found a way — the Lord only knows 
who first discovered it and how he happened 
to do it — to stay through a gas cloud and 
come out alive. It isn't pretty to think of, 
and it's like many other things in this war 
which you can't even tell of in print, be- 
cause simple description would violate the 
nice ethics about reading matter for the pub- 
lic eye, which have grown up in long years 
of peace and traditional decency. But this 
thing which you can't describe meant just 
the difference between life and death to 
many of the Canadians, that first day of the 
gas. Official orders: now, tell every soldier 
what he is to do with his handkerchief or a 
piece of his shirt if he is caught in a gas at- 
tack without his mask. 

The nearest I can come, in print, to tell- 
ing you what a soldier is ordered to do in 

137) 



BEST Ll/CK 



this emergency is to remind you that am- 
monia tunics oppose chlorine gas as a neu- 
tralizing agent, and that certain emanations 
of the body throw off ammonia fumes. 

Now, that Tve told you how we got from 
the Knickerbocker bar and other places to a 
situation which was just one hundred and 
titty yards from the entrenched front of the 
German army in Belgium, L might as well 
add a couple oi details about things which 
straightway put the fear of God in our 
hearts. At daybreak, one of our Fourteenth 
platoon men, standing on the firing step, 
pushed back his trench helmet and remarked 
that he thought it was about time for coffee. 
He didn't get any. A German sharpshooter, 
firing the tirst time that day, got him under 
the rim of his helmet, and his career with 
the Canadian forces was over right there. 
And then, as the dawn broke, we made out 
a big painted sign raised above the German 
front trench. It read : 

WELCOME, 

EIGHTY-SEVENTH CANADIANS 
[38] 



TRAINING FOR THE WAR 



We were a new battalion, we had been less 
than seventy-two hours on the continent of 
Europe and the Germans were not supposed 
to know anything that was going on behind 
our lines! 

We learned, afterward, that concealed 
telephones in the houses of the Belgian bur- 
gomasters of the villages of Dinkiebusch 
and Renninghelst, near our position, gave 
communication with the German headquar- 
ters opposite us. One of the duties of a de- 
tail of our men, soon after that, was to stand 
these two burgomasters up against a wall 
and shoot them. 



[39] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



[41] 



CHAPTER II 

THE BOMBING RAID 



When we took our position in the front 
line trenches in Belgium, we relieved the 
Twenty-sixth Canadian Battalion. The 
Twenty-sixth belonged to the Second divi- 
sion, and had seen real service during the 
battle of Hooge and in what is now termed 
the third battle of Ypres, which occurred in 
June, 1916. The organization was made up 
almost exclusively of French Canadians 
from Quebec, and it was as fine a fighting 
force as we had shown the Fritzes, despite 
the fact that men of their race, as develop- 
ments have proved, are not strongly loyal 
to Canada and Britain. Individually, the 
men of this French Canadian battalion were 
splendid soldiers and the organization could 
be criticized on one score only. In the heat 
of action it could not be kept in control. On 

[43] 



BEST LUCK 



one occasion when it wont Ml, in broad day- 
light, to relieve another battalion, the men 
didn't stop at the tire trench. They went 
right on "over the top," without orders, and, 
as a result, were badly cut up. Time and 
again the men of this battalion crossed "No 
Man's Land" at night, without orders and 
without even asking consent, just to have a 
Scrimmage with "the beloved enemy." 
Once, when ordered to take two lines of 

trenches, they did so in the most soldierly 

fashion, but, seeing red, kept on going as 

it their orders were to continue to Berlin. 
On this occasion they charged right into 
their barrage tire and lost scores of their 
men. struck down by British shells. It has 
been said often oi all the Canadians that 
they go the limit, without hesitation. There 
was a time when the "Bing Boys" — the 
Canadians were so called because this title 
oi a London musical comedy was suggested 
by the tact that their commander was Gen- 
eral Byng — were ordered to take no prison- 
ers, this order being issued after two of their 
men were found crucified. A Canadian pri- 

[44] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



vatc, having penetrated a German trench 
with an attacking party, encountered a Ger- 
man who threw up his hands and said: 
"Mercy, Kamcrade. I have a wife and five 
children at home. 

"You're mistaken," replied the Canadian. 
"You have a widow and five orphans at 
home." 

And, very shortly, he had. 

Scouts from the Twenty-sixth battalion 
had come back to the villages of Dinkei- 
busch and Renninghelst to tell us how glad 
they were to see us and to show us the way 
in. As we proceeded overland, before 
reaching the communication trenches at the 
front, these scouts paid us the hospitable at- 
tentions due strangers. That is, one of them 
leading a platoon would say: 

"Next two hundred yards in machine gun 
range. Keep quiet, don't run, and be ready 
to drop quick if you are warned." 

There was one scout to each platoon, and 
we followed him, single file, most of the 
time along roads or well-worn paths, but 
sometimes through thickets and ragged 

[45] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



fields. Every now and then the scout would 
yell at us to drop, and down we'd go on our 
stomachs while, away off in the distance we 
could hear the "put-put" of machine guns — 
the first sound of hostile firing that had ever 
reached our ears. 

"It's all right," said the scout. "They 
haven't seen us or got track of us. They're 
just firing on suspicion." 

Nevertheless, when our various platoons 
had all got into the front reserve trenches, at 
about two hours after midnight, we learned 
that the first blood of our battalion had been 
spilled. Two men had been wounded, 
though neither fatally. Our own stretcher- 
bearers took our wounded back to the field 
hospital at Dinkiebusch. The men of the 
Twenty-sixth battalion spent the rest of the 
night instructing us and then left us to hold 
the position. We were as nervous as a lot 
of cats, and it seemed to me that the Ger- 
mans must certainly know that they could 
come over and walk right through us, but, 
outside of a few casualities from sniping, 
such as the one that befell the Fourteenth 



[46] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



platoon man, which I have told about, noth- 
ing very alarming happened the first day 
and night, and by that time we had got 
steady on our job. We held the position for 
twenty-six days, which was the longest period 
that any Canadian or British organization 
had ever remained in a front-line trench. 

In none of the stories I've read, have I 
ever seen trench fighting, as it was then car- 
ried on in Belgium, adequately described. 
You see, you can't get much of an idea about 
a thing like that, making a quick tour of the 
trenches under official direction and escort, 
as the newspaper and magazine writers do. 
I couldn't undertake to tell anything worth 
while about the big issues of the war, but I 
can describe how soldiers have to learn to 
fight in the trenches — and I think a good 
many of our young fellows have that to 
learn, now. "Over there," they don't talk of 
peace or even of to-morrow. They just sit 
back and take it. 

We always held the fire trench as lightly 
as possible, because it is a demonstrated fact 
that the front ditch cannot be successfully 

[47] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



defended in a determined attack. The thing 

to do is to be ready to jump onto the enemy 
as soon as he has got into your front trench 
and is fighting on ground that you know and 
he doesn't and knock so many kinds of tar 
out of him that he'll have to pull his freight 
for a spot that isn't so warm. That system 
worked first rate for us. 

During the day, we had only a very few 
men in the fire trench. If an attack is com- 
ing in daylight, there's always plenty of 
time to get ready for it. At night, we kept 
prepared for trouble all the time. We had 
a night sentry on each firing step and a man 
sitting at his feet to watch him and know if 
he was secretly sniped. Then we had a sen- 
try in each "bay" of the trench to take mes- 
sages. 

Orders didn't permit the man on the firing 
step or the man watching him to leave post 
on any excuse whatever, during their two- 
hour "spell" of duty. Hanging on a string, 
at the elbow of each sentry on the fire-step 
was a siren whistle or an empty shell case 
and bit of iron with which to hammer on it. 



L4S] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



This — siren or improvised gong — was for 
the purpose of spreading the alarm in case 
of a gas attack. Also we had sentries in "lis- 
tening posts," at various points from twenty 
to fifty yards out in "No Man's Land." 
These men blackened their faces before they 
went "over the top," and then lay in shell 
holes or natural hollows. There were al- 
ways two of them, a bayonet man and a 
bomber. From the listening post a wire ran 
back to the fire trench to be used in signal- 
ing. In the trench, a man sat with this wire 
wrapped around his hand. One pull meant 
"All O. K.," two pulls, "I'm coming in," 
three pulls, "Enemy in sight," and four 
pulls, "Sound gas alarm." The fire step in 
a trench is a shelf on which soldiers stand 
so that they may aim their rifles between the 
sand bags which form the parapet. 

In addition to these men, we had patrols 
and scouts out in "No Man's Land" the 
greater part of the night, with orders to gain 
any information possible which might be of 
value to battalion, brigade, division or gen- 
eral headquarters. They reported on the 

[49] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



conditions of the Germans' barbed wire, the 
location of machine guns and other little 
things like that which might be of interest 
to some commanding officer, twenty miles 
back. Also, they were ordered to make 
every effort to capture any of the enemy's 
scouts or patrols, so that we could get infor- 
mation from them. One of the interesting 
moments in this work came when a star shell 
caught you out in an open spot. If you 
moved you were gone. I've seen men stand 
on one foot for the thirty seconds during 
which a star shell will burn. Then, when 
scouts or patrols met in u No Man's Land" 
they always had to fight it out with bayonets. 
One single shot would be the signal for ar- 
tillery fire and would mean the almost in- 
stant annihilation of the men on both sides 
of the fight. Under the necessities of this 
war, many of our men have been killed 
by our own shell fire. 

At a little before daybreak came "stand- 
to," when everybody got buttoned up and 
ready for business, because, at that hour, 
most attacks begin and also that was one of 

[50] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



the two regular times for a dose of "morning 
and evening hate," otherwise a good lively 
fifteen minutes of shell fire. We had some 
casualities every morning and evening, and 
the stretcher-bearers used to get ready for 
them as a matter of course. For fifteen 
minutes at dawn and dusk, the Germans 
used to send over "whiz-bangs," "coal- 
boxes" and "minniewurfers" (shells from 
trench mortars) in such a generous way that 
it looked as if they liked to shoot 'em off, 
whether they hit anything or not. You 
could always hear the "heavy stuff" coming, 
and we paid little attention to it as it was 
used in efforts to reach the batteries, back of 
our lines. The poor old town of Dinkie- 
busch got the full benefit of it. When a 
shell would shriek its way over, some one 
would say : "There goes the express for Din- 
kiebusch," and a couple of seconds later, 
when some prominent landmark of Dinkie- 
busch would disintegrate to the accompani- 
ment of a loud detonation, some one else 
would remark: 
"Train's arrived!" 



[51] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



The scouts who inhabited "No Man's 
Land" by night became snipers by day. 
Different units had different systems of util- 
izing these specialists. The British and 
the French usually left their scouts and snip- 
ers in one locality so that they might come 
to know every hummock and hollow and 
tree-stump of the limited landscape which 
absorbed their unending attention The 
Canadians, up to the time when I left 
France, invariably took their scouts and 
snipers along when they moved from one 
section of the line to another. This system 
was criticized as having the disadvantage of 
compelling the men to learn new territory 
while opposing enemy scouts familiar 
with every inch of the ground. As to the 
contention on this point, I could not under- 
take to decide, but it seemed to me that our 
system had, at least, the advantage of keep- 
ing the men more alert and less likely to 
grow careless. Some of our snipers ac- 
quired reputations for a high degree of skill 
and there was always a fascination for me 
in watching them work. We always had 

[52] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



two snipers to each trench section. They 
would stand almost motionless on the fire 
steps for hours at a time, searching every 
inch of the German front trench and the sur- 
rounding territory with telescopes. They 
always swathed their heads with sand bags, 
looking like huge, grotesque turbans, as this 
made the finest kind of an "assimilation cov- 
ering." It would take a most alert German 
to pick out a man's head, so covered, among 
all the tens of thousands of sand bags which 
lined our parapet. The snipers always used 
special rifles with telescopic sights, and they 
made most extraordinary shots. Some of 
them who had been huntsmen in the Cana- 
dian big woods were marvellous marksmen. 
Frequently one of them would continue for 
several days giving special attention to a 
spot where a German had shown the top of 
his head for a moment. If the German ever 
showed again, at that particular spot, he 
was usually done for. A yell or some little 
commotion in the German trenches, follow- 
ing the sniper's quick shot would tell the 
story to us. Then the sniper would receive 

[53] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



general congratulations. There is a first 
warning to every man going into the 
trenches. It is: "Fear God and keep your 
head down." 

Our rations in the trenches were, on the 
whole, excellent. There were no delicacies 
and the food was not over plentiful, but it 
was good. The system appeared to have the 
purpose of keeping us like bulldogs before 
a fight — with enough to live on but hungry 
all the time. Our food consisted princi- 
pally of bacon, beans, beef, bully-beef, hard 
tack, jam and tea. Occasionally we had a 
few potatoes, and, when we were taken back 
for a few days' rest, we got a good many 
things which difficulty of transport excluded 
from the front trenches. It was possible, 
sometimes, to beg, borrow or even steal eggs 
and fresh bread and coffee. 

All of our provisions came up to the front 
line in sand bags, a fact easily recognizable 
when you tasted them. There is supposed 
to be an intention to segregate the various 
foods, in transport, but it must be admitted 
that they taste more or less of each other, 

[54] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



and that the characteristic sand-bag flavor 
distinguishes all of them from mere, ordi- 
nary foods which have not made a venture- 
some journey. As many of the sand bags 
have been originally used for containing 
brown sugar, the flavor is more easily recog- 
nized than actually unpleasant. When we 
got down to the Somme, the food supply was 
much less satisfactory — principally because 
of transport difficulties. At times, even in 
the rear, we could get fresh meat only twice 
a week, and were compelled to live the rest 
of the time on bully-beef stew, which resem- 
bles terrapin to the extent that it is a liquid 
with mysterious lumps in it. In the front 
trenches, on the Somme, all we had were the 
"iron rations" which we were able to carry 
in with us. These consisted of bully-beef, 
hard tack, jam and tea. The supply of these 
foods which each man carries is termed 
"emergency rations," and the ordinary rule 
is that the emergency ration must not be 
touched until the man has been forty-eight 
hours without food, and then only by per- 
mission of an officer. 



[55] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



One of the great discoveries of this war 
is that hard tack makes an excellent fuel, 
burning like coke and giving off no smoke. 
We usually saved enough hard tack to form 
a modest escort, stomachward, for our jam, 
and used the rest to boil our tea. Until one 
has been in the trenches he cannot realize 
what a useful article of diet jam is. It is 
undoubtedly nutritious and one doesn't tire 
of it, even though there seem to be but two 
varieties now existing in any considerable 
quantities — plum and apple. Once upon a 
time a hero of the "ditches" discovered that 
his tin contained strawberry jam, but there 
was such a rush when he announced it that 
he didn't get any of it. 

There was, of course, a very good reason 
for the shortness and uncertainty of the food 
supply on the Somme. All communication 
with the front line was practically overland, 
the communication trenches having been 
blown in. Ration parties, bringing in food, 
frequently suffered heavy casualties. Yet 
they kept tenaciously and courageously do- 
ing their best for us. Occasionally they even 

[56] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



brought up hot soup in huge, improvised 
thermos bottles made from petrol tins 
wrapped in straw and sand bags, but this was 
very rarely attempted, and not with much 
success. You could sum up the food situa- 
tion briefly. It was good — when you got it. 
It may be fitting, at this time, to pay a 
tribute to the soldier's most invaluable 
friend, the sand bag. The sand bag, like the 
rest of us, did not start life in a military 
capacity, but since joining the army it has 
fulfilled its duty nobly. Primarily, sand 
bags are used in making a parapet for a 
trench or a roof for a dug-out, but there are 
a hundred other uses to which they have 
been adapted, without hesitation and possi- 
bly without sufficient gratitude for their 
ready adaptability. Some of these uses may 
surprise you. Soldiers strain their tea 
through them, wrap them around their legs 
for protection against cold and mud, swab 
their rifles with them to keep them clean, 
use them for bed sacks, kit bags and ration 
bags. The first thing a man does when he 
enters a trench or reaches a new position 

[57] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



which is to be held is to feel in his belt, if 
he is a private, or to yell for some one else 
to feel in his belt, if he is an officer, for a 
sand bag. Each soldier is supposed to have 
five tucked beneath his belt whenever he 
starts to do anything out of the ordinary. 
When youVe got hold of the first one, in a 
new position, under fire, you commence fill- 
ing it as fast as the Germans and your own 
ineptitude will permit, and the sooner that 
bag is filled and placed, the more likely you 
are to continue in a state of health and good 
spirits. Sand bags are never filled with 
sand, because there is never any sand to put 
into them. Anything that you can put in 
with a shovel will do. 

About the only amusement we had during 
our long stay in the front trenches in Bel- 
gium, was to sit with our backs against the 
rear wall and shoot at the rats running along 
the parapet. Poor Macfarlane, with a flash 
of the old humor which he had before the 
war, told a "rookie" that the trench rats 
were so big that he saw one of them trying 
on his great-coat. They used to run over 

[58] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



our faces when we were sleeping in our dug- 
outs, and I've seen them in ravenous swarms, 
burrowing into the shallow graves of the 
dead. Many soldiers' legs are scarred to the 
knees with bites. 

The one thing of which we constantly 
lived in fear was a gas attack. I used to 
awaken in the middle of the night, in a cold 
sweat, dreaming that I heard the clatter and 
whistle-blowing all along the line which 
meant that the gas was coming. And, 
finally, I really did hear the terrifying 
sound, just at a moment when it couldn't 
have sounded worse. I was in charge of the 
nightly ration detail, sent back about ten 
miles to the point of nearest approach of the 
transport lorries, to carry in rations, ammu- 
nition and sand bags to the front trenches. 
We had a lot of trouble, returning with our 
loads. Passing a point which was' called 
"Shrapnel Corner" because the Germans 
had precise range on it, we were caught 
in machine-gun fire and had to lie on our 
stomachs for twenty minutes, during which 
we lost one man, wounded. I sent him back 

[59] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



and went on with my party only to run into 
another machine-gun shower a half-mile 
further on. While we were lying down to 
escape this, a concealed British battery of 
five-inch guns, about which we knew noth- 
ing, opened up right over our heads. It 
shook us up and scared us so that some of 
our party were now worse off than the man 
who had been hit and carried to the rear. 
We finally got together and went on. When 
we were about a mile behind the reserve 
trench, stumbling in the dark through the 
last and most dangerous path overland, we 
heard a lone siren whistle followed by a 
wave of metallic hammering and wild toot- 
ing which seemed to spread over all of Bel- 
gium a mile ahead of us. All any of us 
could say was: 

"Gas!" 

All you could see in the dark was a col- 
lection of white and frightened faces. 
Every trembling ringer seemed awkward as 
a thumb as we got out our gas masks and 
helmets and put them on, following direc- 
tions as nearly as we could. I ordered the 

[60] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



men to sit still and sent two forward to no- 
tify me from headquarters when the gas 
alarm was over. They lost their way and 
were not found for two days. We sat there 
for an hour, and then I ventured to take my 
mask off. As nothing happened, I ordered 
the men to do the same. When we got into 
the trenches with our packs, we found that 
the gas alarm had been one of Fritz's jokes. 
The first sirens had been sounded in the Ger- 
man lines, and there hadn't been any gas. 

Our men evened things up with the Ger- 
mans, however, the next night. Some of our 
scouts crawled clear up to the German 
barbed wire, ten yards in front of the enemy 
fire trench, tied empty jam-tins to the barri- 
cade and then, after attaching light tele- 
phone wires to the barbed strands, crawled 
back to our trenches. When they started 
pulling the telephone wires the empty tins 
made a clatter right under Fritz's nose. 
Immediately the Germans opened up with 
all their machine-gun and rifle fire, began 
bombing the spot from which the noise came 
and sent up "S. O. S." signals for artillery 

[61] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



fire along a mile of their line. They fired 
a ten-thousand-dollar salute and lost a 
night's sleep over the noise made by the dis- 
carded containers of five shillings' worth of 
jam. It was a good tonic for the Tommies. 

A few days after this, a very young offi- 
cer passed me in a trench while I was sitting 
on a fire-step, writing a letter. I noticed 
that he had the red tabs of a staff officer on 
his uniform, but I paid no more attention 
to him than that. No compliments such as 
salutes to officers are paid in the trenches. 
After he had passed, one of the men asked 
me if I didn't know who he was. I said I 
didn't. 

"Why you d d fool," he said, "that's 

the Prince of Wales." 

When the little prince came back, I stood 
to salute him. He returned the salute with 
a grave smile and passed on. He was quite 
alone, and I was told afterward, that he 
made these trips through the trenches just 
to show the men that he did not consider 
himself better than any other soldier. The 
heir of England was certainly taking nearly 

[62] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



the same chance of losing his inheritance 
that we were. 

After we had been on the front line fifteen 
days, we received orders to make a bombing 
raid. Sixty volunteers were asked for, and 
the whole battalion offered. I was lucky — 
or unlucky — enough to be among the sixty 
who were chosen. I want to tell you in de- 
tail about this bombing raid, so that you 
can understand what a thing may really 
amount to that gets only three lines, or per- 
haps nothing at all, in the official dispatches. 
And, besides that, it may help some of the 
young men who read this, to know some- 
thing, a little later, about bombing. 

The sixty of us chosen to execute the raid 
were taken twenty miles to the rear for a 
week's instruction practice. Having only a 
slight idea of what we were going to try to 
do, we felt very jolly about the whole enter- 
prise, starting off. We were camped in an 
old barn, with several special instruction 
officers in charge. We had oral instruction, 
the first day, while sappers dug and built 
an exact duplicate of the section of the Ger- 

[63] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



man trenches which we were to raid. That 
is, it was exact except for a few details. 
Certain "skeleton trenches," in the practice 
section, were dug simply to fool the German 
aviators. If a photograph, taken back to 
German headquarters, had shown an exact 
duplicate of a German trench section, suspi- 
cion might have been aroused and our plans 
revealed. We were constantly warned about 
the skeleton trenches and told to remember 
that they did not exist in the German section 
where we were to operate. Meanwhile, our 
practice section was changed a little, several 
times, because aerial photographs showed 
that the Germans had been renovating and 
making some additions to the trenches in 
which wc were to have our frolic with them. 
We had oral instruction, mostly, during 
the day, because we didn't dare let the Ger- 
man aviators see us practicing a bomb raid. 
All night long, sometimes until two or three 
o'clock in the morning, we rehearsed that 
raid, just as carefully as a company of star 
actors would rehearse a play. At first there 
was a disposition to have sport out of it. 

[64] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



"Well," some chap would say, rolling into 
the hay all tired out, "I got killed six times 
to-night. S'posc it'll be several times more 
to-morrow night." 

One man insisted that he had discovered, 
in one of our aerial photographs, a German 
burying money, and he carefully examined 
each new picture so that he could be sure to 
find the dough and dig it up. The 
grave and serious manner of our officers, 
however ; the exhaustive care with which we 
were drilled and, more than all, the ap- 
proach of the time when we were "to go 
over the top," soon drove sport out of our 
minds, and I can say for myself that the very 
thought of the undertaking, as the fatal 
night drew near, sent shivers up and down 
my spine. 

A bombing raid — something originated in 
warfare by the Canadians — is not intended 
for the purpose of holding ground, but to 
gain information, to do as much damage as 
possible, and to keep the enemy in a state of 
nervousness. In this particular raid, the 
chief object was to gain information. Our 

[65] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



high command wanted to know what troops 
were opposite us and what troops had been 
there. We were expected to get this infor- 
mation from prisoners and from buttons and 
papers off of the Germans we might kill. 
It was believed that troops were being re- 
lieved from the big tent show, up at the 
Somme, and sent to our side show in Bel- 
gium for rest. Also, it was suspected that 
artillery was being withdrawn for the 
Somme. Especially, we were anxious to 
bring back prisoners. 

In civilized war, a prisoner can be com- 
pelled to tell only his name, rank and relig- 
ion. But this is not a civilized war, and 
there are ways of making prisoners talk. 
One of the most effective ways — quite hu- 
mane — is to tie a prisoner fast, head and 
foot, and then tickle his bare feet with a 
feather. More severe measures have fre- 
quently been used — the water cure, for in- 
stance — but Tm bound to say that nearly all 
the German prisoners I saw were quite lo- 
quacious and willing to talk, and the accu- 
racy of their information, when later con- 

[66] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



firmed by raids, was surprising. The iron 
discipline, which turns them into mere chil- 
dren in the presence of their officers seemed 
to make them subservient and obedient to 
the officers who commanded us. In this 
way, the system worked against the Father- 
land. I mean, of course, in the cases of pri- 
vates. Captured German officers, espe- 
cially Prussians, were a nasty lot. We 
never tried to get information from them 
for we knew they would lie, happily and 
intelligently. 

At last came the night when we were to 
go "over the top," across "No Man's Land," 
and have a frolic with Fritz in his own, 
bailiwick. I am endeavoring to be as ac- 
curate and truthful as possible in these 
stories of my soldiering, and I am therefore 
compelled to say that there wasn't a man in 
the sixty who didn't show the strain in his 
pallor and nervousness. Under orders, we 
discarded our trench helmets and substi- 
tuted knitted skull caps or mess tin covers. 
Then we blackened our hands and faces 
with ashes from a camp fire. After 

[67] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



this they loaded us into motor trucks and 
took us up to "Shrapnel Corner," from 
which point we went in on foot. Just before 
we left, a staff officer came along and gave 
us a little talk. 

"This is the first time you men have been 
tested/' he said. "You're Canadians. I 
needn't say anything more to you. They're 
going to be popping them off at a great rate 
while you're on your way across. Remem- 
ber that you'd better not stand up straight 
because our shells will be going over just 
six and a half feet from the ground — where 
it's level. If you stand up straight you're 
likely to be hit in the head, but don't let that 
worry you because if you do get hit in the 
head you won't know it. So why in hell 
worry about it?" That was his farewell. 
He jumped on his horse and rode off. 

The point we were to attack had been se- 
lected long before by our scouts. It was not, 
as you might suppose, the weakest point in 
the German line. It was on the contrary, 
the strongest. It was considered that the 
moral effect of cleaning up a weak point 

[68] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



would be comparatively small, whereas to 
break in at the strongest point would be 
something really worth while. And, if we 
were to take chances, it really wouldn't pay 
to hesitate about degrees. The section we 
were to raid had a frontage of one hundred 
and fifty yards and a depth of two hundred 
yards. It had been explained to us that we 
were to be supported by a "box barrage," or 
curtain fire from our artillery, to last exactly 
twenty-six minutes. That is, for twenty-six 
minutes from the time when we started 
"over the top," our artillery, several miles 
back, would drop a "curtain'' of shells all 
around the edges of that one hundred and 
fifty yard by two hundred yard section. We 
were to have fifteen minutes in which to do 
our work. Any man not out at the end of 
the fifteen minutes would necessarily be 
caught in our own fire as our artillery would 
then change from a "box" to pour a straight 
curtain fire, covering all of the spot of our 
operations. 

Our officers set their watches very care- 
fully with those of the artillery officers, be- 

[69] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



fore we went forward to the front trenches. 
We reached the front at u P.M., and 
not until our arrival there were we informed 
of the "zero hour" — the time when the at- 
tack was to be made. The hour of twelve- 
ten had been selected. The waiting from 
eleven o'clock until that time was simply an 
agony. Some of our men sat stupid and 
inert. Others kept talking constantly about 
the most inconsequential matters. One man 
undertook to tell a funny story. No one lis- 
tened to it, and the laugh at the end was 
emaciated and ghastly. The inaction was 
driving us all into a state of funk. I could 
actually feel my nerve oozing out at my fin- 
ger tips, and, if we had had to wait fifteen 
minutes longer, I shouldn't have been able 
to climb out of the trench. 

About half an hour before we were to go 
over, every man had his eye up the trench 
for we knew "the rummies" were coming 
that way. The rum gang serves out a stiff 
shot of Jamaica just before an attack, and 
it would be a real exhibition of temperance 
to see a man refuse. There were no prohibi- 

[70] 



THE BOMBING RAID 



tionists in our set. Whether or not we got 
our full ration depended on whether the ser- 
geant in charge was drunk or sober. After 
the shot began to work, one man next to me 
pounded my leg and hollered in my ear: 

"I say. Why all this red tape? Let's go 
over now." 

That noggin' of rum is a life saver. 

When the hour approached for us to start, 
the artillery fire was so heavy that orders 
had to be shouted into ears, from man to 
man. The bombardment was, of course, 
along a couple of miles of front, so that the 
Germans would not know where to expect 
us. At twelve o'clock exactly they began 
pulling down a section of the parapet so that 
we wouldn't have to climb over it, and we 
were off. 



[7i 



"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL' 



[73l 



CHAPTER III 

"over the top and give 'em hell 1 



As we climbed out of the shelter of our 
trenches for my first — and, perhaps, my last, 
I thought — adventure in "No Man's Land, 1 ' 
the word was passed : 

"Over the top and give 'em hell!" 

That is the British Tommies' battle cry 
as they charge the enemy and it has often 
sounded up and down those long lines in 
western France as the British, Canadian, 
and Australian soldiers go out to the fight 
and the death. 

We were divided into six parties of ten 
men, each party having separate duties to 
perform. We crouched forward, moving 
slowly in single file, stumbling into shell 
holes and over dead men — some very long 
dead — and managing to keep in touch with 
each other through the machine-gun bullets 

[75] 



BEST LUCK 



began to drop men almost immediately. 
Once we were started, we were neither fear- 
ful, nor rattled. We had been drilled so 
long and so carefully that each man knew 
just what he was to do and he kept right on 
doing it unless he got hit. To me, it seemed 
the ground was moving back under me. 
The first ten yards were the toughest. The 
thing was perfectly organized. Our last 
party of ten was composed of signallers. 
They were paying out wires and carrying 
telephones to be used during the til teen 
minutes of our stay in the German trenches 
in communicating with our battalion head- 
quarters. A telephone code had been ar- 
ranged, using the names of our commanding 
officers as smybols. "Rexford i" meant, 
"First prisoners being sent back"; "Rexford 
2" meant, "Our iirst wounded being sent 
over"; "Rexford 3" meant, "We have en- 
tered German trench. " The code was very 
complete and the signallers had been drilled 
in it for a week. In case the telephone wires 
were cut, the signallers were to send mes- 
sages back by the use of rirle grenades. 

[76] 



"over the TOP AND give -em hell" 

These arc rifle projectiles which carry little 
metal cylinders to contain written messages, 
and which hurst into flame when they strike 
the earth, so that they can be easily found at 
night. The officer in charge of the signal- 
lers was to remain at the point of entrance, 
with his eyes on his watch. It was his duty 
to sound a warning signal five minutes be- 
fore the end of our time in the German 
trenches. 

The leader of every party of ten also had 
a whistle with which to repeat the warning 
blast and then the final blast, when each man 
was to drop everything and get back of our 
artillery fire. We were not to leave any 
dead or wounded in the German trench, on 
account of the information which the Ger- 
mans might thus obtain. Before starting on 
the raid, we had removed all marks from 
our persons, including even our identifica- 
tion discs. Except for the signallers, each 
party of ten was similarly organized. First, 
there were two bayonet men, each with an 
electric flash light attached to his rifle so as 
to give light for the direction of a bayonet 

177] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



thrust and controlled by a button at the left- 
hand grasp of the rifle. Besides his rifle, each 
of these men carried six or eight Mills No. 
5 hand grenades, weighing from a pound 
and five ounces to a pound and seven ounces 
each. These grenades are shaped like tur- 
key eggs, but slightly larger. Upon with- 
drawing the firing pin, a lever sets a four- 
second fuse going. One of these grenades 
will clean out anything living in a ten-foot 
trench section. It will also kill the man 
throwing it, if he holds it more than four 
seconds, after he has pulled the pin. The 
third man of each ten was an expert bomb 
thrower, equipped as lightly as possible to 
give him freedom of action. He carried a 
few bombs, himself, but the main supply 
was carried by a fourth man who was not to 
throw any unless the third man became a 
casualty, in which case number four was to 
take his place. The third man also carried a 
knob-kerrie — a heavy bludgeon to be used 
in whacking an enemy over the head. The 
kind we used was made by fastening a heavy 
steel nut on a stout stick of wood — a very 

[78] 



"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 

business-like contrivance. The fourth man, 
or bomb carrier, besides having a large sup- 
ply of Mills grenades, had smoke bombs, to 
be used in smoking the Germans out of dug- 
outs and, later, if necessary, in covering our 
retreat, and also fumite bombs. The latter 
are very dangerous to handle. They con- 
tain a mixture of petrol and phosphorous, 
and weigh three pounds each. On explod- 
ing they release a liquid fire which will burn 
through steel. 

The fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth in 
line, were called utility men. They were to 
take the places of any of the first four who 
might become casualties. In addition, they 
carried two Stokes-gun bombs, each. These 
weigh nine pounds apiece, have six-second 
fuses, and can be used in wrecking dug-outs. 
The ninth and tenth men were sappers, car- 
rying slabs of gun-cotton and several hun- 
dred yards of instantaneous fuse. This ex- 
plosive is used in demolishing machine-gun 
emplacements and mine saps. The sappers 
were to lay their charges while we were at 
work in the trenches, and explode them as 

[79] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



soon as our party was far enough out on the 
return journey to be safe from this danger. 
In addition to these parties of ten, there 
were three of us who carried bombs and had 
orders to keep near the three officers, to take 
the place of any one of them that might go 
down, and meanwhile to use our own judg- 
ment about helping the jolly old party 
along. I was one of the three. 

In addition to the raiding party, proper, 
there was a relay all across "No Man's 
Land/' at ten paces interval, making a hu- 
man chain to show us our way back, to assist 
the wounded and, in case of opportunity or 
necessity, to re-enforce us. They were or- 
dered not to leave their positions when we 
began to come back, until the last man of 
our party had been accounted for. The final 
section of our entourage was composed of 
twelve stretcher-bearers, who had been spe- 
cially trained with us, so that they would be 
familiar with the trench section which we 
were to raid. 

There were two things which made it pos- 
sible for our raiding party to get started 



[So] 



"over the top and give 'em hell" 

across "No Man's Land." One was the mo- 
mentary quickening of the blood which fol- 
lows a big and unaccustomed dose of rum, 
and the other was a sort of subconscious, me- 
chanical confidence in our undertaking, 
which was a result of the scores of times we 
had gone through every pre-arranged move- 
ment in the duplicate German trenches be- 
hind our lines. Without either of those in- 
fluences, we simply could not have left shel- 
ter and faced what was before us. 

An intensified bombardment from our 
guns began just as soon as we had 
climbed "over the top" and were lining up 
for the journey across. "Lining up" is not 
just a suitable term. We were crawling 
about on all fours, just far enough out in 
"No Man's Land" to be under the edge of 
the German shell-fire, and taking what shel- 
ter we could in shell-holes while our leaders 
picked the way to start across. The extra 
heavy bombardment had warned the Ger- 
mans that something was about to happen. 
They sent up star shells and "S. O. S." sig- 
nals, until there was a glare over the torn 

[81] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



earth like that which you see at the grand 
finish of a Pain's fire-works display, and 
meanwhile they sprayed "No Man's Land" 
with streams of machine-gun fire. In the 
face of that, we started. 

It would be absurd to say that we were 
not frightened. Thinking men could not 
help but be afraid. If we were pallid — 
which undoubtedly we were — the black 
upon our faces hid it, but our fear-struck 
voices were not disguised. They trembled 
and our teeth chattered. 

We sneaked out, single file, making our 
way from shell-hole to shell-hole, nearly all 
the time on all fours, crawling quickly over 
the flat places between holes. The Ger- 
mans had not sighted us, but they were 
squirting machine-gun bullets all over the 
place like a man watering a lawn with a 
garden hose, and they were bound to get 
some of us. Behind me, I heard cries of 
pain, and groans, but this made little im- 
pression on my benumbed intelligence. 
From the mere fact that whatever had 
happened had happened to one of the 

[82] 



"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 

other sections of ten and not to my own, it 
seemed, some way or another, no affair to 
concern me. Then a man in front of me 
doubled up suddenly and rolled into a shell- 
hole. That simply made me remember very 
clearly that I was not to stop on account of 
it. It was some one else's business to pick 
that man up. Next, according to the queer 
psychology of battle, I began to lose my 
sensation of fear and nervousness. After I 
saw a second man go down, I gave my atten- 
tion principally to a consideration of the ir- 
regularities of the German parapet ahead of 
us, picking out the spot where we were to 
enter the trench. It seems silly to say it, 
but I seemed to get some sort of satisfaction 
out of the realization that we had lost the 
percentage which we might be expected to 
lose, going over. Now, it seemed, the rest 
of us were safe until we should reach the 
next phase of our undertaking. I heard di- 
rections given and I gave some myself. My 
voice was firm, and I felt almost calm. 
Our artillery had so torn up the Ger- 
man barbed wire that it gave us no 

[83] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



trouble at all. We walked through it with 
only a few scratches. When we reached the 
low, sand-bag parapet of the enemy trench, 
we tossed in a few bombs and followed them 
right over as soon as they had exploded. 
There wasn't a German in sight. They were 
all in their dug-outs. But we knew pretty 
well where every dugout was located, and 
we rushed for the entrances with our bombs. 
Everything seemed to be going just as we 
had expected it to go. Two Germans ran 
plump into me as I round a ditch angle, 
with a bomb in my hand. They had their 
hands up and each of them yelled: 

"Mercy, Kamaradl" 

I passed them back to be sent to the rear, 
and the man who received them from me 
chuckled and told them to step lively. The 
German trenches were practically just as we 
had expected to find them, according to our 
sample. They were so nearly similar to the 
duplicate section in which we had practiced 
that we had no trouble finding our way in 
them. I was just thinking that really the 
only tough part of the job remaining would 

[84] 



"over the top and give 'em hell" 

be getting back across "No Man's Land," 
when it seemed that the whole earth behind 
me, rose in the air. For a moment I was 
stunned, and half blinded by dirt blown 
into my face. When I was able to see, I 
discovered that all that lay back of me was 
a mass of upturned earth and rock, with here 
and there a man shaking himself or scramb- 
ling out of it or lying still. 

Just two minutes after we went into their 
trench, the Germans had exploded a mine 
under their parapet. I have always believed 
that in some way or another they had learned 
which spot we were to raid, and had pre- 
pared for us. Whether that's true or not, 
one thing is certain. That mine blew our 
organization, as we would say in Kentucky, 
"plumb to Hell." And it killed or disabled 
more than half of our party. 

There was much confusion among those 
of us who remained on our feet. Some one 
gave an order to retire and some one coun- 
termanded it. More Germans came out of 
their dug-outs, but, instead of surrendering 
as per our original schedule, they threw 

[85] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



bombs amongst us. It became apparent that 
we should be killed or captured if we stuck 
there and that we shouldn't get any more 
prisoners. I looked at my wrist watch and 
saw that there remained but five minutes 
more of the time which had been allotted 
for our stay in the trench, so I blew my 
whistle and started back. I had seen Pri- 
vate Green (No. 177,250) knocked down 
by a bomb in the next trench section, and I 
picked him up and carried him out over the 
wrecked parapet. I took shelter with him 
in the first shell-hole but found that he 
was dead and left him there. A few yards 
further back toward our line I found Lance 
Corporal Glass in a shell-hole, with part of 
his hip shot away. He said he thought he 
could get back if I helped him, and I started 
with him. Private Hunter, who had been 
in a neighboring shell-hole came to our as- 
sistance, and between us, Hunter and I got 
Glass to our front trench. 

We found them lining up the survivors 
of our party for a roll call. That showed 
so many missing that Major John Lewis, 

[86] 



u OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 

our company commander, formerly manag- 
ing-editor of the Montreal Star, called for 
volunteers to go out in "No Man's Land" 
and try to find some of our men. Corporal 
Charleson, Private Saunders and I went 
out. We brought in two wounded, and we 
saw a number of dead, but, on account of 
their blackened faces, were unable to iden- 
tify them. The scouts, later, brought in 
several bodies. 

Of the sixty odd men who had started in 
our party, forty-three were found to be casu- 
alties — killed, wounded, or missing. The 
missing list was the longest. The names of 
these men were marked, "M. B. K." (miss- 
ing, believed killed) on our rolls. I have 
learned since that some few of them 
have been reported through Switzerland 
as prisoners of war in Germany, but 
most of them are now officially listed as 
dead. 

All of the survivors of the raiding party 
were sent twenty miles to the rear at seven 
o'clock, and the non-commissioned officers 
were ordered to make reports in writing 

[87] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



concerning the entire operation. We re- 
corded, each in his own way, the ghastly 
failure of our first aggressive effort against 
the Germans, before we rolled into the hay 
in the same old barn where we had been 
quartered during the days of preparation for 
the raid. I was so dead tired that I soon 
fell asleep, but not for long. I never slept 
more than an hour at a time for several days 
and nights. I would doze off from sheer ex- 
haustion, and then suddenly find myself sit- 
ting straight up, scared half to death, all 
over again. 

There may be soldiers who don't get 
scared when they know they are in danger 
or even when people are being killed right 
around them, but I'm not one of them. And 
I've never met any of them yet. I know a 
boy who won the Military Medal, in the 
battle of the Somme, and I saw him on his 
knees before his platoon commander, shame- 
lessly crying that he was a coward and beg- 
ging to be left behind, just when the order to 
advance was given. 

Soldiers of our army who read this story 

[88] 



"over the top and give 'em hell" 

will probably observe one thing in particu- 
lar, and that is the importance of bombing 
operations in the present style of warfare. 
You might say that a feature of this war has 
been the renaissance of the grenadier. Only 
British reverence for tradition kept the 
name of the Grenadiers alive, through a con- 
siderable number of wars. Now, in every 
offensive, big or small, the man who has 
been trained to throw a bomb thirty yards is 
busier and more important than the fellow 
with the modern rifle which will shoot a 
mile and a half and make a hole through a 
house. In a good many surprising ways this 
war has carried us back to first principles. 
I remember a Crusader's mace which I once 
saw in the British museum that would make 
a bang-up knob-kerrie, much better than the 
kind with which they arm our Number 4 
men in a raiding party section. It had a 
round, iron head with spikes all over it. I 
wonder that they haven't started a factory 
to turn them out. 

As I learned during my special training 
in England, the use of hand grenades was 

[89] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



first introduced in warfare by the French, in 
1667. The British did not use them until ten 
years later. After the battle of Waterloo 
the hand grenade was counted an obsolete 
weapon until the Japanese revived its use in 
the war with Russia. The rude grenades 
first used by the British in the present war 
weighed about eight pounds. To-day, in the 
British army, the men who have been 
trained to throw grenades — now of lighter 
construction and much more efficient and 
certain action — are officially known as 
"bombers." for this reason: When grenade 
lighting came hack to its own in this war, 
each battalion trained a certain number of 
men in the use of grenades, and, naturally, 
called them "grenadiers. " The British 
Grenadier Guards, the senior foot regiment 
in the British Army, made formal com- 
plaint against the use of their time-honored 
name in this connection, and British rev- 
erence for tradition did the rest. The 
Grenadiers were no longer grenadiers, but 
they were undoubtedly the Grenadiers. The 
war office issued a formal order that battal- 



[90] 



"OVER the top and give 'em HELL" 

ion grenade throwers should be known as 
"bombers" and not as "grenadiers." 

Up to the time when 1 left France we had 
some twenty-seven varieties of grenades, but 
most of them were obsolete or ineffective, 
and we only made use of seven or eight 
sorts. The grenades were divided into two 
principal classes, rifle grenades and hand 
grenades. The rifle grenades are discharged 
from a rifle barrel by means of a blank car- 
tridge. Each grenade is attached to a slen- 
der rod which is inserted into the bore of 
the rifle, and the longer the rod the greater 
the range of the grenade. The three princi- 
pal rifle grenades are the Mills, the Hales, 
and the Newton, the former having a maxi- 
mum range of 120 yards, and the latter of 
400 yards. A rifle discharging a Mills 
grenade may be fired from the shoulder, as 
there is no very extraordinary recoil, but in 
using the others it is necessary to fasten the 
rifle in a stand or plant the butt on the 
ground. Practice teaches the soldier how 
much elevation to give the rifle for different 
ranges. The hand grenades are divided also 

[91] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



into two classes, those which are dis- 
charged by percussion, and those which have 
time fuses, with detonators of fulminate of 
mercury. The high explosives used are am- 
monal, abliste and sabulite, but ammonal is 
the much more commonly employed. There 
are also smoke bombs, the Mexican or tonite 
bomb, the Hales hand grenade, the No. 19 
grenade and the fumite bomb, which con- 
tains white phosphorous, wax and petrol, 
and discharges a stream of liquid fire which 
will quickly burn out a dug-out and every- 
thing it contains. Hand grenades are al- 
ways thrown with a stiff arm, as a bowler 
delivers a cricket ball toward the wicket. 
They cannot be thrown in the same manner 
as a baseball for two reasons. One is that 
the snap of the wrist with which a baseball 
is sent on its way would be likely to cause 
the premature discharge of a percussion 
grenade, and the second is that the grenades 
weigh so much — from a pound and a half to 
ten pounds — that the best arm in the world 
couldn't stand the strain of whipping them 
off as a baseball is thrown. I'm talking by 

[92] 



"over the top and give 'em hell" 

the book about this, because I've been a 
bomber and a baseball player. 

A bomber, besides knowing all about the 
grenades in use in his own army, must have 
practical working knowledge concerning 
the grenades in use by the enemy. After 
we took the Regina trench, on the Somme, 
we ran out of grenades at a moment when 
a supply was vitally necessary. We found 
a lot of the German "egg" bombs, and 
through our knowledge of their workings 
and our consequent ability to use them 
against their original owners we were able 
to hold the position. 

An officer or non-commissioned officer in 
charge of a bombing detail must know inti- 
mately every man in his command, and have 
such discipline that every order will be car- 
ried out with scrupulous exactitude when 
the time comes. The leader will have no 
time, in action, to prompt his men or even 
to see if they are doing what they have been 
told to do. When a platoon of infantry is in 
action one rifleman more or less makes little 
difference, but in bombing operations each 

[93] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



man has certain particular work to do and 
he must do it, just as it has been planned, in 
order to protect himself and his comrades 
from disaster. If you can out-throw the 
enemy, or if you can make most of the 
bombs land with accuracy, you have a won- 
derful advantage in an attack. But throw- 
ing wild or throwing short you simply give 
confidence to the enemy in his own offen- 
sive. One very good thrower may win an 
objective for his squad, while one man who 
is faint-hearted or unskilled or "rattled" 
may cause the entire squad to be anni- 
hilated. 

In the revival of bombing, some tricks 
have developed which would be humorous 
if the denouments were not festooned with 
crepe and accompanied by obituary nota- 
tions on muster rolls. There may be some- 
thing which might be termed funny on one 
end of a bombing-ruse — but not on both 
ends of it. Whenever you fool a man with 
a bomb, you're playing a practical joke on 
him that he'll never forget. Even, probably, 
he'll never get a chance to remember it. 

[94] 



"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 

When the Canadians first introduced 
bombing, the bombs were improvised out of 
jam tins, the fuses were cut according to the 
taste and judgment of the individual 
bomber, and, just when the bomb would ex- 
plode, was more or less problematical. 
Frequently, the Germans have tossed our 
bombs back into our trenches before they 
went off. That was injurious and irritating. 
They can't do that with a Mills grenade 
nor with any of the improved factory-made 
bombs, because the men know just how they 
are timed and are trained to know just how 
to throw them. The Germans used to work 
another little bomb trick of their own. 
They learned that our scouts and raiders 
were all anxious to get a German helmet as 
a souvenir. TheyM put helmets on the 
ground in "No Man's Land," or in an ad- 
vanced trench with bombs under them. In 
several cases, men looking for souvenirs sud- 
denly became mere memories, themselves. 
In several raids, when bombing was new, the 
Canadians worked a trick on the Germans 
with extensively fatal effect. They tossed 

[0*1 



BEST 0' LUCK 



bombs into the German trenches with six- 
inch fuses attached. To the Germans they 
looked just like the other bombs we had 
been using, and, in fact they were — all but 
the fuses. Instead of having tailed to con- 
tinue burning, as the Germans thought, 
those fuses had never been lighted. They 
were instantaneous fuses. The ignition 
spark will travel through instantaneous fuse 
at the rate of about thirty yards a second. 
A German would pick up one of these 
bombs, select the spot where he intended to 
blow up a few of us with our own ammonal, 
and then light the fuse. After that there had 
to be a new man in his place. The bomb 
would explode instantly the long fuse was 
ignited. 

The next day when I got up after this 
disastrous raid, I said to my bunkie: 

"Got a fag?" ( Fag is the Tommy's name 
for a cigarette.) 

It's never, "will you have a fag?" but al- 
ways, "have you got a fag?" 

They are the inseparable companions of 
the men at the front, and you'll see the sol- 

[96] 



"over the top and give 'em hell" 

diers go over the top with an unlit fag in 
their lips. Frequently, it is still there when 
their work is done. 

As we sat there smoking, my friend said: 
"Something sure raised hell with our cal- 
culations." 

"Like those automatic self-cocking revol- 
vers did with a Kentucky wedding when 
some one made a remark reflecting on the 
bride," I replied. 

It may be interesting to note that Corpl. 
Glass, Corpl. Charleson and Private (later 
Corpl.) Saunders have all since been 
"Killed in Action." Charleson and Saun- 
ders the same morning I was wounded on 
the Somme, and Glass, Easter morning at 
Vimy Ridge, when the Canadians made 
their wonderful attack. 



[97] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



[»] 



CHAPTER IV 

SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



A few days after the bombing raid, which 
ended so disastrously for us, our battalion 
was relieved from duty on the front line, and 
the tip we got was that we were to go down 
to the big show then taking place on the 
Somme. Our relief was a division of Aus- 
tralians. You see, the sector which we had 
held in Belgium was a sort of preparatory 
school for the regular fighting over in 
France. 

It wasn't long before we got into what 
you might call the Big League contest but, 
in the meanwhile, we had a little rest from 
battling Fritz and the opportunity to ob- 
serve some things which seem to me to be 
worth telling about. Those of you who are 
exclusively fond of the stirring detail of 
war, such as shooting and being shot at and 

[IOI] 



BEST O' LUCK 



bombing and bayoneting, need only skip a 
little of this. We had an entirely satisfac- 
tory amount of smoke and excitement later. 

As soon as our relief battalion had got in, 
we moved back to Renninghelst for a couple 
of days rest. We were a pretty contented 
and jovial lot — our platoon, especially. We 
were all glad to get away from the strain of 
holding a front trench, and there were other 
advantages. For instance, the alterations of 
our muster roll due to casualties, had not 
come through battalion headquarters and, 
therefore, we had, in our platoon, sixty-three 
rum rations, night and morning, and only 
sixteen men. There was a Canadian Scot in 
our crowd who said that the word which 
described the situation was "g-r-r-r-a-nd!" 

There was a good deal of jealousy at that 
time between the Canadians and the Aus- 
tralians. Each had the same force in the 
field — tour divisions. Either force was big- 
ger than any other army composed exclu- 
sively of volunteers ever before assembled. 
While I belong to the Canadian army and 
believe the Canadian overseas forces the 



102] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



finest troops ever led to war, I must say that 
I have never seen a body of men so magnifi- 
cent in average physique as the Australians. 
And some of them were even above the high 
average. The man that punched me in the 
eye in an "estaminet" in Poperinghe made 
up entirely in his own person for the ab- 
sence of Les Darcy from the Australian 
ranks. I don't know just how the fight 
started between the Australians and us, in 
Poperinghe, but I know that it took three 
regiments of Imperial troops to stop it. The 
most convincing story I heard of the origin 
of the battle was told me by one of our men 
who said he was there when it began. He 
said one of the Australians had carelessly re- 
marked that the British generals had de- 
cided it was time to get through with the 
side-show in Belgium and this was the rea- 
son why they had sent in regular troops like 
the Australians to relieve the Canadians. 

Then some sensitive Canadian wished the 
Australians luck and hoped they'd finish it 
up as well as they had the affair in the Dar- 
danelles. After that, our two days' rest was 

[103I 



BEST 0' LUCK 



made up principally of beating it out of 
"estaminets" when strategic requirements 
suggested a new base, or beating it into 
"estaminets" where it looked as if we could 
act as efficient re-inforcements. The fight 
never stopped for forty-eight hours, and the 
only places it didn't extend to were the 
church and the hospitals. I'll bet, to this 
day, that the Belgians who run the "estami- 
nets" in Poperinghe will duck behind the 
bars if you just mention Canada and Aus- 
tralia in the same breath. 

But Tin bound to say that it was good, 
clean fighting. Nobody fired a shot, no- 
body pulled a bayonet, and nobody got the 
wrong idea about anything. The Australian 
heavy-weight champion who landed on me 
went right out in the street and saluted one 
of our lieutenants. We had just one satis- 
fying reflection after the fight was over. 
The Australian battalion that relieved us 
fell heir to the counter attack which the 
Germans sent across to even up on our 
bombing raid. 

We began our march to the Somme by a 

[104] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



hike to St. Ohmcr, one of the early British 
headquarters in Europe. Then we stopped 
for a week about twenty miles from Calais, 
where we underwent a course of intensified 
training for open fighting. The infantry 
tactics, in which we were drilled, were very 
similar to those of the United States army 
— those which, in fact, were originated by 
the United States troops in the days of In- 
dian fighting. We covered most of the 
ground around Calais on our stomachs in 
open order. While it may seem impertinent 
for me, a mere non-com., to express an opin- 
ion about the larger affairs of the campaign, 
I think I may be excused for saying that 
the war didn't at all take the course which 
was expected and hoped for after the fight 
on the Somme. Undoubtedly, the Allies ex- 
pected to break through the German line. 
That is well known now. While we were 
being trained near Calais for open warfare, 
a very large force of cavalry was being as- 
sembled and prepared for the same purpose. 
It was never used. 
That was last August, and the Allies 

[105] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



haven't broken through yet. Eventually I 
believe they will break through, but, in 
my opinion, men who are waiting now 
to learn if they are to be drawn for 
service in our new American army will 
be veterans in Europe before the big break 
comes, which will wreck the Prussian 
hope of success in this war. And if we of 
the U. S. A. don't throw in the weight to 
beat the Prussians now, they will not be 
beaten, and, in that case, the day will not be 
very far distant when we will have to beat 
them to save our homes and our nation. War 
is a dreadful and inglorious and ill-smelling 
and cruel thing. But if we hold back now, 
we will be in the logical position of a man 
hesitating to go to grips with a savage, 
shrieking, spewing maniac who has all but 
whipped his proper keepers, and is going 
after the on-looker next. 

We got drafts of recruits before we went 
on to the Somme, and some of our wounded 
men were sent back to England, where we 
had left our "Safety-first Battalion." That 
was really the Fifty-first battalion, of the 

[106] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



Fourth Division of the Canadian forces, 
composed of the physically rejected, men 
recovering from wounds, and men injured 
in training. The Tommies, however, called 
it the "Safety-first," or "Major Gilday's 
Light Infantry." Major Gilday was our 
battalion surgeon. He was immensely pop- 
ular, and he achieved a great name for him- 
self. He made one realize what a great 
personal force a doctor can be and what an 
unnecessary and overwrought elaboration 
there is in the civil practice of medicine. 

Under Major Gilday's administration, no 
man in our battalion was sick if he could 
walk, and, if he couldn't walk, there was a 
reasonable suspicion that he was drunk. 
The Major simplified the practice of medi- 
cine to an exact science involving just two 
forms of treatment and two remedies— 
"Number Nines" and whale oil. Number 
Nines were pale, oval pills, which, if they 
had been eggs, would have run about eight 
to an omelette. They had an internal effect 
which could only be defined as dynamic. 
After our men had become acquainted with 



[107I 



BEST 0' LUCK 



them through personal experience they 
stopped calling them "Number Nines" and 
called them "whiz-bangs." There were only 
two possibilities of error under Major Gil- 
day's system of simplified medicine. One 
was to take a whiz-bang for trench feet, and 
the other to use whale oil externally for 
some form of digestional hesitancy. And, in 
either case, no permanent harm could result, 
while the error was as simple of correction 
as the command "about face." 

There was a story among our fellows that 
an ambulance had to be called for Major 
Gilday, in London, one day, on account of 
shock following a remark made to him by 
a bobby. The Major asked the policeman 
how he could get to the Cavoy Hotel. The 
bobby, with the proper bus line in mind, re- 
plied: "Take a number nine, sir." 

Two weeks and a half after we left Bel- 
gium we arrived at Albert, having marched 
all the way. The sight which met our eyes 
as we rounded the rock-quarry hill, outside 
of Albert, was wonderful beyond descrip- 
tion. I remember how tremendously it im- 



[108] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



pressed my pal, Macfarlane. He sat by the 
roadside and looked 'round over the land- 
scape as if he were fascinated. 

"Boy," said he, "we're at the big show at 
last." 

Poor fellow, it was not only the big show, 
but the last performance for him. Within 
sight of the spot where he sat, wondering, 
he later fell in action and died. The scene, 
which so impressed him, gave us all a feel- 
ing of awe. Great shells from a thou- 
sand guns were streaking and criss-crossing 
the sky. Without glasses I counted thirty- 
nine of our observation balloons. Away of! 
in the distance I saw one German captive 
balloon. The other air-craft were uncount- 
able. They were everywhere, apparently in 
hundreds. There could have been no more 
wonderful panoramic picture of war in its 
new aspect. 

Our battalion was in and out of the town 
of Albert several days waiting for orders. 
The battle of Courcelette was then in prog- 
ress, and the First, Second and Third Cana- 
dian divisions were holding front positions 

[109] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



at terrible cost. In the first part of October, 
1916, we "went in" opposite the famous Re- 
gina trench. The battle-ground was just 
miles :\nd miles of debris and shell-holes. 
Before we went to our position, the officers 
and non-coms, were taken in bv scouts to get 
the lay of the land. These trips were called 
"Cook's Tours.* 1 On one oi them I went 
through the town of Poziers twice and 
didn't know it. It had a population of 
12,000 before the war. On the spot where 
it had stood not even a whole brick was left, 
it seemed. Its demolition was complete. 
That was .m example of the condition oi the 
whole country over which our forces had 
blasted their way for ten miles, since the 
previous July. There were not even land- 
marks lett. 

The town oi Albert will always remain 
in my memory, and, especially, 1 shall al- 
wavs have the mental picture of the cathe- 
dral, with the statue ot the Virgin Mary with 
the Babe in her arms, apparently about to 
topple from the roof. German shells had 
carried aw av so much of the base oi the 



[no] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



statue that it inclined at an angle of 45 de- 
grees. The Germans — for some reason 
which only they can explain — expended 
much ammunition in trying to complete the 

destruction of the cathedral, but they did 
Hot succeed and they'll never do it now. 
The superstitious French say that when the 
statue tails the war will end. 1 have a due 
regard for sacred things, but if the omen 
were to be depended upon I should not re- 
gret to see the tail occur. 

An unfortunate and tragic mishap oc- 
curred just outside of Albert when the 
Somme offensive started on July 1. The 
signal for the first advance was to be the 
touching off of a big mine. Some fifteen 
minutes before the mine exploded the Ger- 
mans set otf one of their own. Two regi- 
ments mistook this for the signal and started 
over. They ran simultaneously into their 
own barrage and a German fire, and were 
simply cut to pieces in as little time, almost, 
as it takes to say it. 

The Germans are methodical to such an 
extent that at times this usually excellent 

[in] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



quality acts to defeat their own ends. An 
illustration of this was presented during the 
bombardment of Albert. Every evening at 
about six o'clock they would drop thirty 
high-explosive shells into the town. When 
we hoard the first one coming we would dive 
for the cellars. Everyone would remain 
counting the explosions until the number 
had readied thirty. Then everyone 
would come up from the cellars and go 
about his business. There were never thirty- 
one shells and never twenty-nine shells. 
The number was always exactly thirty, and 
then the high-explosive bombardment was 
over. Knowing this, none of us ever got 
hurt. Their methodical "evening hate" was 
wasted, except for the damage it did to 
buildings in the town. 

On the night when we went in to occupy 
the positions we were to hold, our scouts, 
leading us through the flat desert of de- 
struction, got completely turned 'round, and 
took us back through a trench composed of 
shell-holes, connected up, until we ran into 
a battalion of another brigade. The place 

[112] 



SHIFTED TO TIIK SOMME 



was dreadful beyond words. The stench of 
the dead was sickening. In many places 
arms and legs of dead men stuck out of the 
trench walls. 

We made a fresh start, after our blunder, 
moving in single file and keeping in touch 
each with the man ahead of him. We stum- 
bled along in the darkness through this 
awful labyrinth until we ran into some of 
our own scouts at 2 A.M., and found that we 
were half-way across "No Man's Land," 
several hundred yards beyond our front line 
and likely to be utterly wiped out in twenty 
seconds should the Germans sight us. At 
last we reached the proper position, and fif- 
teen minutes after we got there a whiz-bang 
buried me completely. They had to dig me 
out. A few minutes later another high-ex- 
plosive shell fell in a trench section where 
three of our men were stationed. All we 
could find after it exploded were one arm 
and one leg which we buried. The trenches 
were without trench mats, and the mud was 
from six inches to three feet deep all 
through them. There were no dug-outs; 

[113] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



only miserable "funk holes," dug where it 
was possible to dig them without uncover- 
ing dead men. We remained in this posi- 
tion four days, from the 17th to the 21st of 
October, 191 6. 

There were reasons, of course, for the dif- 
ference between conditions in Belgium and 
on the Somme. On the Somme, we were 
constantly preparing for a new advance, and 
we were only temporarily established on 
ground which we had but recently taken, 
after long drumming with big guns. The 
trenches were merely shell-holes connected 
by ditches. Our old and ubiquitous and use- 
ful friend, the sand bag, was not present in 
any capacity, and, therefore, we had no 
parapets or dug-outs. The communication 
trenches were all blown in and everything 
had to come to us overland, with the result 
that we never were quite sure when we 
should get ammunition, rations, or relief 
forces. The most awful thing was that the 
soil all about us was filled with freshly- 
buried men. I f we undertook to cut a trench 
or enlarge a funk hole, our spades struck 

[114] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



into human flesh, and the explosion of a big 
shell along our line sent decomposed and 
dismembered and sickening mementoes of 
an earlier fight showering amongst us. We 
lived in the muck and stench of "glorious" 
war; those of us who lived. 

Here and there, along this line, were the 
abandoned dug-outs of the Germans, and we 
made what use of them we could, but that 
was little. I had orders one day to locate 
a dug-out and prepare it for use as battalion 
headquarters. When I led a squad in to 
clean it up the odor was so overpowering 
that we had to wear our gas masks. On 
entering, with our flashlights, we first saw 
two dead nurses, one standing with her 
arm 'round a post, just as she had stood 
when gas or concussion killed her. Seated 
at a table in the middle of the place was the 
body of an old general of the German medi- 
cal corps, his head fallen between his hands. 
The task of cleaning up was too dreadful 
for us. We just tossed in four or five f umite 
bombs and beat it out of there. A few hours 
later we went into the seared and empty 

[115] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



cavern, made the roof safe with new 
timbers, and notified battalion headquarters 
that the place could be occupied. 

During this time I witnessed a scene 
which — with some others — I shall never 
forget. An old chaplain of the Canadian 
forces came to our trench section seeking the 
grave of his son, which had been marked 
for him on a rude map by an officer who 
had seen the young man's burial. We man- 
aged to find the spot, and, at the old chap- 
lain's request, we exhumed the body. Some 
of us suggested to him that he give us the 
identification marks and retire out of range 
of the shells which were bursting all around 
us. We argued that it was unwise for him 
to remain unnecessarily in danger, but what 
we really intended was that he should be 
saved the horror of seeing the pitiful thing 
which our spades were about to uncover. 

"I shall remain," was all he said. "He 
was my boy." 

It proved that we had found the right 
body. One of our men tried to clear the 
features with his handkerchief, but ended by 

[116] 



SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 



spreading the handkerchief over the face. 
The old chaplain stood beside the body and 
removed his trench helmet, baring his gray 
locks to the drizzle of rain that was falling. 
Then, while we stood by with bowed heads, 
his voice rose amid the noise of bursting 
shells, repeating the burial service of the 
Church of England. I have never been so 
impressed by anything in my life as by that 
scene. 

The dead man was a young captain. He 
had been married to a lady of Baltimore, 
just before the outbreak of the war. 

The philosophy of the British Tommies, 
and the Canadians and the Australians on 
the Somme was a remarkable reflection of 
their fine courage through all that hell. 
They go about their work, paying no atten- 
tion to the flying death about them. 

"If Fritz has a shell with your name and 
number on it," said a British Tommy to me 
one day, "you're going to get it whether 
you're in the front line or seven miles back. 
If he hasn't, you're all right." 

Fine fighters, all. And the Scotch kilties, 

[117] 



BEST O' LUCK 



lovingly called by the Germans, "the women 
from hell," have the respect of all armies. 
We saw little of the Poilus, except a few on 
leave. All the men were self-sacrificing to 
one another in that big melting pot from 
which so few ever emerge whole. The only 
things it is legitimate to steal in the code of 
the trenches are rum and "fags" (ciga- 
rettes). Every other possession is as safe as 
if it were under a Yale lock. 



[n8] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



t«9l 



CHAPTER V 

WOUNDED IN ACTION 



Our high command apparently meant to 
make a sure thing of the general assault 
upon the Regina trench, in which we were 
to participate. Twice the order to "go 
over the top" was countermanded. The 
assault was first planned for October 19th. 
Then the date was changed to the 20th. 
Finally, at 12 : 00 noon, of October 21st, we 
went. It was the first general assault we had 
taken part in, and weyvere in a highly nerv- 
ous state. I'll admit that. 

It seemed almost certain death to start 
over in broad daylight, yet, as it turned out, 
the crossing of "No Man's Land" was ac- 
complished rather more easily than in our 
night raids. Our battalion was on the ex- 
treme right of the line, and that added ma- 
terially to our difficulties, first by compel- 

[121] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



ling us to advance through mud so deep that 
some of our men sank to their hips in it and, 
second, by giving us the hottest little spot in 
France to hold later. 

I was in charge of the second "wave" or 
assault line. This is called the "mopping 
up" wave, because the business of the men 
composing it is thoroughly to bomb out 
a position crossed by the first wave, to 
capture or kill all of the enemy remaining, 
and to put the trench in a condition to 
be defended against a counter attack by 
reversing the fire steps and throwing up 
parapets. 

While I was with the Canadians, all at- 
tacks, or rather advances, were launched in 
four waves, the waves being thirty to fifty 
yards apart. A wave, I might explain, is 
a line of men in extended order, or about 
three paces apart. Our officers were in- 
structed to maintain their places in the line 
and to wear no distinguising marks which 
might enable sharpshooters to pick them off. 
Invariably, however, they led the men out 
of our trenches. "Come on, boys, let's go," 

[122] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



they would say, climbing out in advance. It 
was bred in them to do that. 

Experience had taught us that it took the 
German barrage about a minute and a half 
to get going after ours started, and that they 
always opened up on our front line trench. 
We had a plan to take advantage of this 
knowledge. We usually dug an "assembly 
trench" some distance in advance of our front 
line, and started from it. Thus we were able 
to line up between two fires, our shells 
bursting ahead of us, and the Germans' be- 
hind us. All four waves started from the 
assembly trench at once, the men of the sec- 
ond, third and fourth waves falling back to 
their proper distances as the advance pro- 
ceeded. The first wave worked up to within 
thirty to fifty yards of our own barrage and 
then the men lay down. At this stage, our 
barrage was playing on the enemy front line 
trench. After a certain interval, carefully 
timed, the gunners, away back of our lines, 
elevated their guns enough to carry our bar- 
rage a certain distance back of the enemy 
front trench and then our men went in at 



[123] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



the charge, to occupy the enemy trench be- 
fore the Germans in the dugouts could 
come out and organize a defense. Unless 
serious opposition was met the first wave 
went straight through the first trench, leav- 
ing only a few men to guard the dugout 
entrances pending the arrival of the second 
wave. The second wave, only a few seconds 
behind the first one, proceeded to do the 
"mopping up." Then this wave, in turn, 
went forward, leaving only a few men be- 
hind to garrison the captured trench. 

The third and fourth waves went straight 
on unless assistance was needed, and rushed 
up to the support of the new front line. The 
men in these waves were ammunition car- 
riers, stretcher-bearers and general reen- 
forcements. Some of them were set to work 
at once digging a communication trench to 
connect our original front line with our new 
support and front lines. When we estab- 
lished a new front line we never used the 
German trench. We had found that the 
German artillery always had the range of 
that trench down, literally speaking, to an 

[124] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



inch. We always dug a new trench either 
in advance of the German trench or in the 
rear of it. Our manner of digging a trench 
under these circumstances was very simple 
and pretty sure to succeed except in an ex- 
tremely heavy fire. Each man simply got 
as flat to the ground as possible, seeking 
whatever cover he might avail himself of, 
and began digging toward the man nearest 
him. Sand bags were filled with the first 
dirt and placed to afford additional cover. 
The above system of attack, which is now 
well known to the Germans, was, at the time 
when I left France, the accepted plan when 
two lines of enemy trenches were to be taken. 
It has been considerably changed, now, I am 
told. If the intention was to take three, four, 
five or six lines, the system was changed only 
in detail. When four or more lines were to 
be taken, two or more battalions were assem- 
bled to operate on the same frontage. The 
first battalion took two lines, the second 
passed through the first and took two more 
lines, and so on. The Russians had been 
known to launch an attack in thirty waves. 

[125] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



It is interesting to note how every attack, 
nowadays, is worked out in advance in the 
smallest detail, and how everything is done 
on a time schedule. Aerial photographs of 
the position they are expected to capture are 
furnished to each battalion, and the men are 
given the fullest opportunity to study them. 
All bombing pits, dugouts, trench mortar 
and machine-gun emplacements are marked 
on these photographs. Every man is given 
certain work to do and is instructed and re- 
instructed until there can be no doubt that 
he has a clear knowledge of his orders. But, 
besides that, he is made to understand the 
scope and purpose and plan of the whole 
operation, so that he will know what to do 
if he finds himself with no officer to com- 
mand. This is one of the great changes 
brought about by this war, and it signalizes 
the disappearance, probably forever, of a 
long-established tradition. It is something 
which I think should be well impressed 
upon the officers of our new army, about to 
enter this great struggle. The day has 
passed when the man in the ranks is sup- 

[ia6] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



posed merely to obey. He must know what 
to do and how to do it. He must think for 
himself and "carry on" with the general 
plan, if his officers and N. C. O.'s all be- 
come casualties. Sir Douglas Haig said: 
"For soldiers in this war, give me business 
men with business sense, who are used to 
taking initiative." 

While I was at the front I had oppor- 
tunity to observe three distinct types of bar- 
rage fire, the "box," the "jumping," and the 
"creeping." The "box," I have already de- 
scribed to you, as it is used in a raid. The 
"jumping" plays on a certain line for a cer- 
tain interval and then jumps to another line. 
The officers in command of the advance 
know the intervals of time and space and 
keep their lines close up to the barrage, mov- 
ing with it on the very second. The "creep- 
ing" barrage opens on a certain line and then 
creeps ahead at a certain fixed rate of speed, 
covering every inch of the ground to be 
taken. The men of the advance simply walk 
with it, keeping within about thirty yards 
of the line on which the shells are falling. 

[127] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



Eight-inch shrapnel, and high-explosive 
shells were used exclusively by the British 
when I was with them in maintaining bar- 
rage fire. The French used their Seventy- 
fives," which are approximately of eight- 
inch calibre. Of late, I believe, the British 
and French have both added gas shells for 
this use, when conditions make it possible. 
The Germans, in establishing a barrage, 
used their "whiz-bangs," slightly larger 
shells than ours, but they never seemed 
to have quite the same skill and certitude 
in barrage bombardment that our artillery- 
men had. 

To attempt to picture the scene of two 
barrage fires, crossing, is quite beyond me. 
You see two walls of flame in front of you, 
one where your own barrage is playing, and 
one where the enemy guns are firing, and 
you see two more walls of flame behind you, 
one where the enemy barrage is playing, 
and one where your own guns are firing. 
And amid it all you are deafened by titanic 
explosions which have merged into one roar 
of thunderous sound, while acrid fumes 

[128] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



choke and blind you. To use a fitting, if not 
original phrase, it's just "Hell with the 
lid off." 

That day on the Somme, our artillery 
had given the Germans such a bat- 
tering and the curtain fire which our 
guns dropped just thirty to forty yards 
ahead of us was so powerful that we lost 
comparatively few men going over — only 
those who were knocked down by shells 
which the Germans landed among us 
through our barrage. They never caught 
us with their machine guns sweeping until 
we neared their trenches. Then a good 
many of our men began to drop, but we were 
in their front trench before they could cut us 
up anywhere near completely. Going over, 
I was struck by shell fragments on the hand 
and leg, but the wounds were not severe 
enough to stop me. In fact, I did not know 
that I had been wounded until I felt blood 
running into my shoe. Then I discovered 
the cut in my leg, but saw that it was quite 
shallow, and that no artery of importance 
had been damaged. So I went on. 

[129] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



I had the familiar feeling of nervousness 
and physical shrinking and nausea at the be- 
ginning of this fight, but, by the time we 
were half way across "No Man's Land," I 
had my nerve back. After I had been hit, 
I remember feeling relieved that I hadn't 
been hurt enough to keep me from going on 
with the men. I'm not trying to make my- 
self out a hero. I'm just trying to tell you 
how an ordinary man's mind works under 
the stress of fighting and the danger of sud- 
den death. There are some queer things in 
the psychology of battle. For instance, 
when we had got into the German trench 
and were holding it against the most vig- 
orous counter attacks, the thought which was 
persistently uppermost in my mind was that 
I had lost the address of a girl in London 
along with some papers which I had thrown 
away, just before we started over, and which 
I should certainly never be able to find 
again. 

The Regina trench had been taken and lost 
three times by the British. We took it that 
day and held it. We went into action with fif- 

[130] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



teen hundred men of all ranks and came out 
with six hundred. The position, which was 
the objective of our battalion, was opposite 
to and only twelve hundred yards distant 
from the town of Pys, which, if you take the 
English meaning of the French sound, was a 
highly inappropriate name for that particu- 
lar village. During a good many months, 
for a good many miles 'round about that 
place, there wasn't any such thing as 
"Peace." From our position, we could see 
a church steeple in the town of Baupaume 
until the Germans found that our gunners 
were using it as a "zero" mark, and blew it 
down with explosives. 

I have said that, because we were on the 
extreme right of the line, we had the hottest 
little spot in France to hold for a while. 
You see, we had to institute a double defen- 
sive, as we had the Germans on our front 
and on our flank, the whole length of the 
trench to the right of us being still held by 
the Germans. There we had to form a 
"block," massing our bombers behind a bar- 
ricade which was only fifteen yards from the 

[131] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



barricade behind which the Germans were 
fighting. Our flank and the German flank 
were in contact as fiery as that of two live 
wire ends. And, meanwhile, the Fritzes 
tried to rush us on our front with nine sepa- 
rate counter attacks. Only one of them got 
up close to us, and we went out and stopped 
that with the bayonet. Behind our block 
barricade, there was the nearest approach to 
an actual fighting Hell that I had seen. 

And yet a man who was in the midst of 
it from beginning to end, came out without 
a scratch. He was a tall chap named Hun- 
ter. For twenty-four hours, without inter- 
ruption, he threw German "egg-shell" 
bombs from a position at the center of our 
barricade. He never stopped except to light 
a cigarette or yell for some one to bring him 
more bombs from Fritz's captured store- 
house. He projected a regular curtain of 
fire of his own. Fve no doubt the Germans 
reported he was a couple of platoons, work- 
ing in alternate reliefs. He was awarded 
the D. C. M. for his services in that fight, 
and though, as I said, he was unwounded, 

[132] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



half the men around him were killed, and 
his nerves were in such condition at the end 
that he had to be sent back to England. 

One of the great tragedies of the war re- 
sulted from a bit of carelessness when, a 
couple of days later, the effort was made to 
extend our grip beyond the spot which we 
took in that first fight. Plans had been made 
for the Forty-fourth Battalion of the Tenth 
Canadian Brigade to take by assault the 
trench section extending to the right from 
the point where we had established the 
"block" on our flank. The hour for the at- 
tack had been fixed. Then headquarters 
sent out countermanding orders. Some- 
thing wasn't quite ready. 

The orders were sent by runners, as all 
confidential orders must be. Telephones 
are of little use, now, as both our people 
and the Germans have an apparatus which 
needs only to be attached to a metal spike 
in the ground to "pick up" every telephone 
message within a radius of three miles. 
When telephones are used now, messages 
are ordinarily sent in code. But, for 

1*33] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



any vitally important communication which 
might cost serious losses, if misunderstood, 
old style runners are used, just as they were 
in the days when the field telephone was un- 
heard of. It is the rule to dispatch two or 
three runners by different routes so that one, 
at least, will be certain to arrive. In the 
case of the countermanding of the order for 
the Forty-fourth Battalion to assault the 
German position on our flank, some officer 
at headquarters thought that one messenger 
to the Lieut.-Colonel commanding the For- 
ty-fourth would be sufficient. The messen- 
ger was killed by a chance shot and his mes- 
sage was undelivered. The Forty-fourth, in 
ignorance of change of plan, "went over." 
There was no barrage fire to protect the 
force and their valiant effort was simply a 
wholesale suicide. Six hundred out of eight 
hundred men w r ere on the ground in two and 
one-half minutes. The battalion was simply 
wiped out. Several officers were court- 
martialed as a result of this terrible blunder. 
We had gone into the German trenches at 
a little after noon, on Saturday. On Sun- 

[i34] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



day night at about 10 P.M. we were relieved. 
The relief force had to come in overland, 
and they had a good many casualities en 
route. They found us as comfortable as 
bugs in a rug, except for the infernal and 
continous bombing at our flank barricade. 
The Germans on our front had concluded 
that it was useless to try to drive us out. 
About one-fourth of the six hundred of us, 
who were still on our feet, were holding the 
sentry posts, and the remainder of the six 
hundred were having banquets in the Ger- 
man dugouts, which were stocked up like 
delicatessen shops with sausages, fine canned 
foods, champagne and beer. If we had only 
had a few ladies with us, we could have had 
a real party. 

I got so happily interested in the spread 
in our particular dugout that I forgot about 
my wound until some one reminded me that 
orders required me to hunt up a dressing 
station, and get an anti-tetanus injection. I 
went and got it, all right, but an injection 
was about the only additional thing I could 
have taken at that moment. If I had had to 



[135] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



swallow anything more, it would have been 
a matter of difficulty. Tommies like to take 
a German trench, because if the Fritzes 
have to move quickly, as they usually do, 
we always find sausage, beer, and cham- 
pagne — a welcome change from bully beef. 
I could never learn to like their bread, how- 
ever. 

After this fight I was sent, with other 
slightly wounded men, for a week's rest at 
the casualty station, at Contay. I rejoined 
my battalion at the end of the week. From 
October 21st to November 1 8th we were in 
and out of the front trenches several times 
for duty tours of forty-eight hours each, but 
were in no important action. At 6: 10 A.M., 
on the morning of November 18th, a bitter 
cold day, we "went over" to take the Desire 
and also the Desire support trenches. We 
started from the left of our old position, and 
our advance was between Thieval and Poi- 
zers, opposite to Grandecourt. 

There was the usual artillery prepara- 
tion and careful organization for the attack. 

[136] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



I was again in charge of the "mopping up" 
wave, numbering two hundred men and con- 
sisting mostly of bombers. It may seem 
strange to you that a non-commissioned offi- 
cer should have so important an assignment, 
but, sometimes, in this war, privates have 
been in charge of companies, numbering 
two hundred and fifty men, and I know of 
a case where a lance-corporal was tempor- 
arily in command of an entire battalion. It 
happened, on this day that, while I was in 
charge of the second wave, I did not go over 
with them. At the last moment, I was given 
a special duty by Major Lewis, one of 
the bravest soldiers I ever knew, as well as 
the best beloved man in our battalion. A 
messenger came to me from him just as I 
was overseeing a fair distribution of the rum 
ration, and incidentally getting my own 
share. I went to him at once. 

"McClintock," said he, "I don't wish to 
send you to any special hazard, and, so far 
as that goes, we're all going to get more or 
less of a dusting. But I want to put that 

[i37] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



machine gun which has been giving us so 
much trouble out of action." 

I knew very well the machine gun he 
meant. It was in a concrete emplacement, 
walled and roofed, and the devils in charge 
of it seemed to be descendents of William 
Tell and the prophet Isaiah. They always 
knew what was coming and had their gun 
accurately trained on it before it came. 

"If you are willing," said Major Lewis, 
"I wish you to select twenty-five men from 
the company and go after that gun the min- 
ute the order comes to advance. Use your 
own judgment about the men and the plan 
for taking the gun position. Will you go?" 

"Yes, sir," I answered. "I'll go and pick 
out the men right away. I think we can 
make those fellows shut up shop over there." 

"Good boy!" he said. "You'll try, all 
right." 

I started away. He called me back. 

"This is going to be a bit hot, McClin- 
tock," he said, taking my hand. "I wish you 
the best of luck, old fellow — you and the 
rest of them." In the trenches they always 

[138] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



wish you the best of luck when they hand 
you a particularly tough job. 

I thanked him and wished him the same. 
I never saw him again. He was killed in 
action within two hours after our conversa- 
tion. Both he and my pal, Macfarlane, 
were shot down dead that morning. 

When they called for volunteers to go 
with me in discharge of Major Lewis' order, 
the entire company responded. I picked out 
twenty-five men, twelve bayonet men and 
thirteen bombers. They agreed to my plan 
which was to get within twenty-five yards of 
the gun emplacement before attacking, to 
place no dependence on rifle fire, but to 
bomb them out and take the position with 
the bayonet. We followed that plan and 
took the emplacement quicker than we had 
expected to do, but there were only two of 
us left when we got there — Private Godsall, 
No. 177,063, and myself. All the rest of 
the twenty-five were dead or down. The 
emplacement had been held by eleven Ger- 
mans. Two only were left standing when 
we got in. 

[139] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



When we saw the gun had been silenced 
and the crew disabled, Godsall and I 
worked round to the right about ten yards 
from the shell-hole where we had sheltered 
ourselves while throwing bombs into the 
emplacement, and scaled the German para- 
pet. Then we rushed the gun position. The 
officer who had been in charge was standing 
with his back to us, firing with his revolver 
down the trench at our men who were com- 
ing over at another point. I reached him 
before Godsall and bayoneted him. The 
other German who had survived our bomb- 
ing threw up his hands and mouthed the 
Teutonic slogan of surrender, "Mercy, 
Kamerad." My bayonet had broken off in 
the encounter with the German officer, and 
I remembered that I had been told always 
to pull the trigger after making a bayonet 
thrust, as that would usually jar the weapon 
loose. In this case, I had forgotten instruc- 
tions. I picked up a German rifle with 
bayonet fixed, and Godsall and I worked on 
down the trench. 

The German, who had surrendered, stood 

[140] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



with his hands held high above his head, 
waiting for us to tell him what to do. He 
never took his eyes of! of us even to look at 
his officer, lying at his feet. As we moved 
down the trench, he followed us, still hold- 
ing his hands up and repeating, "Mercy, 
Kamerad!" At the next trench angle we 
took five more prisoners, and as Godsall had 
been slightly wounded in the arm, I turned 
the captives over to him and ordered him to 
take them to the rear. Just then the men 
of our second wave came over the parapet 
like a lot of hurdlers. In five minutes, we 
had taken the rest of the Germans in the 
trench section prisoners, had reversed the 
fire steps, and had turned their own machine 
guns against those of their retreating com- 
panies that we could catch sight of. 

As we could do nothing more here, I gave 
orders to advance and reenforce the front 
line. Our way led across a field furrowed 
with shell-holes and spotted with bursting 
shells. Not a man hesitated. We were win- 
ning. That was all we knew or cared to 
know. We wanted to make it a certainty for 

[141] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



our fellows who had gone ahead. As we 
were proceeding toward the German reserve 
trench, I saw four of our men, apparently 
unwounded, lying in a shell-hole. I stopped 
to ask them what they were doing there. As 
I spoke, I held my German rifle and bayo- 
net at the position of "guard," the tip of the 
bayonet advanced, about shoulder high. I 
didn't get their answer, for, before they 
could reply, I felt a sensation as if some one 
had thrown a lump of hard clay and struck 
me on the hip, and forthwith I tumbled in 
on top of the four, almost plunging my bay- 
onet into one of them, a private named Wil- 
liams. 

"Well, now you know what's the matter 
with us," said Williams. "We didn't fall 
in, but we crawled in." 

They had all been slightly wounded. I 
had twenty-two pieces of shrapnel and some 
shell fragments imbedded in my left leg be- 
tween the hip and the knee. I followed the 
usual custom of the soldier who has got it." 
The first thing I did was to light a "fag" 
(cigarette) and the next thing was to inves- 

[142] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



tigate and determine if I was in danger of 
bleeding to death. There wasn't much 
doubt about that. Arterial blood was spurt- 
ing from two of the wounds, which were re- 
vealed when the other men in the hole 
helped me to cut off my breeches. With 
their aid, I managed to stop the hemorrhage 
by improvising tourniquets with rags and 
bayonets. One I placed as high up as possi- 
ble on the thigh and the other just below the 
knee. Then we all smoked another "fag" 
and lay there, listening to the big shells go- 
ing over and the shrapnel bursting near us. 
It was quite a concert, too. We discussed 
what we ought to do, and finally I said: 

"Here; you fellows can walk, and I can't. 
Furthermore, you're not able to carry me, 
because you've got about all any of you can 
do to navigate alone. It doesn't look as if 
its going to be any better here very soon. 
You all proceed to the rear, and, if you can 
get some one to come after me, I'll be 
obliged to you." 

They accepted the proposition, because it 
was good advice and, besides, it was orders. 

[143] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



I was their superior officer. And what hap- 
pened right after that confirmed me forever 
in my early, Kentucky-bred conviction that 
there is a great deal in luck. They couldn't 
have travelled more than fifty yards from the 
shell-hole when the shriek of a high-explo- 
sive seemed to come right down out of the 
sky into my ears, and the detonation, which 
instantly followed, shook the slanting sides of 
the shell-hole until dirt in dusty little 
rivulets came trickling down upon me. 
Wounded as I was, I dragged myself up to 
the edge of the hole. There was no trace, 
anywhere, of the four men who had just left 
me. They have never been heard of since. 
Their bodies were never found. The big 
shell must have fallen right amongst them 
and simply blown them to bits. 

It was about a quarter to seven in the 
morning when I was hit. I lay in the shell- 
hole until two in the afternoon, suffering 
more from thirst and cold and hunger than 
from pain. At two o'clock, a batch of 
sixty prisoners came along under escort. 
They were being taken to the rear un- 



[i44] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



der fire. The artillery bombardment 
was still practically undiminished. I 
asked for four of the prisoners and made one 
of them get out his rubber ground sheet, car- 
ried around his waist. They responded wil- 
lingly, and seemed most ready to help me. 
I had a revolver (empty) and some bombs 
in my pockets, but I had no need to threaten 
them. Each of the four took a corner 
of the ground sheet and, upon it, they half 
carried and half dragged me toward the 
rear. 

It was a trip which was not without inci- 
dent. Every now and then we would hear 
the shriek of an approaching "coal box," 
and then my prisoner stretcher-bearers and 
I would tumble in one indiscriminate heap 
into the nearest shell-hole. If we did that 
once, we did it a half dozen times. After 
each dive, the four would patiently reorga- 
nize and arrange the improvised stretcher 
again, and we would proceed. Following 
every tumble, however, I would have to 
tighten my tourniquets, and, despite all I 
could do, the hemorrhage from my wound 

[145] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



continued so profuse that I was begin- 
ning to feel very dizzy and weak. On 
the way in, I sighted our regimental dress- 
ing station and signed to my four bearers to 
carry me toward it. The station was in an 
old German dugout. Major Gilday was at 
the door. He laughed when he saw me 
with my own special ambulance detail. 

"Well, what do you want? 1 ' he asked. 

"Most of all," I said, "I think I want a 
drink of rum." 

He produced it for me instantly. 

"Now," said he, "my advice to you is to 
keep on travelling. You've got a fine spe- 
cial detail there to look after you. Make 
'em carry you to Poizers. It's only five 
miles, and you'll make it all right. I've got 
this place loaded up full, no stretcher- 
bearers, no assistants, no adequate supply 
of bandages and medicines, and a lot of 
very bad cases. If you want to get out of 
here in a week, just keep right on going, 
now." 

As we continued toward the rear, we were 
the targets for a number of humorous re- 

[146] 



WOUNDED IN ACTION 



marks from men coming up to go into the 
fight. 

"Give my regards to Blighty, you lucky 
beggar," was the most frequent saying. 

"Bli' me," said one Cockney Tommy. 
"There goes one o' th' Canadians with an 
escort from the Kaiser." 

Another man stopped and asked about my 
wound. 

"Good work," he said. "I'd like to have 
a nice clean one like that, myself." 

I noticed one of the prisoners grinning at 
some remark and asked him if he understood 
English. He hadn't spoken to me, though 
he had shown the greatest readiness to help 
me. 

"Certainly I understand English," he re- 
plied. "I used to be a waiter at the Knick- 
erbocker Hotel, in New York." That 
sounded like a voice from home, and I 
wanted to hug him. I didn't. However, I 
can say for him he must have been a good 
waiter. He gave me good service. 

Of the last stages of my trip to Poizers I 
cannot tell anything for I arrived uncon- 

[147] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



scious from loss of blood. The last I re- 
member was that the former waiter, evi- 
dently seeing that I was going out, asked me 
to direct him how to reach the field dress- 
ing station at Poizers and whom to ask for 
when he got there. I came back to con- 
sciousness in an ambulance on the way to 
Albert. 



[148] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



[i49l 



CHAPTER VI 

A VISIT FROM THE KING 



I was taken from Poizers to Albert in a 
Ford ambulance, or, as the Tommies would 
say, a "tin Lizzie." The man who drove this 
vehicle would make a good chauffeur for 
an adding machine. Apparently, he was 
counting the bumps in the road for he didn't 
miss one of them. However, the trip was 
only a matter of seven miles, and I was in 
fair condition when they lifted me out and 
carried me to an operating table in the field 
dressing station. 

A chaplain came along and murmured a 
little prayer in my ear. I imagine that 
would make a man feel very solemn if 
he thought there was a chance he was 
about to pass out, but I knew I merely had 
a leg pretty badly smashed up, and, while 
the chaplain was praying, I was wondering 

-[151] 



BEST (/ LUCK 



if they would have to cut it off. I figured, 
if so, this would handicap my dancing. 

The first formality in a shrapnel case is 
the administration of an anti-tetanus inocu- 
lation, and, when it is done, you realize that 
they are sure trying to save your life. The 
doctor uses a horse-syringe, and the injec- 
tion leaves a lump on your chest as big as 
a base ball which stays there for forty- 
eight hours. After the injection a nurse 
fills out a diagnosis blank with a description 
of your wounds and a record of your name, 
age, regiment, regimental number, religion, 
parentage, and previous history as far as she 
can discover it without asking questions 
which would be positively indelicate. After 
all of that, my wounds were given their first 
real dressing. 

Immediately after this was done, I was 
bundled into another ambulance — this time 
a Cadillac — and driven to Contay where the 
CCS. (casualty clearing station) and rail- 
head were located. In the ambulance with 
me went three other soldiers, an artillery 
officer and two privates of infantry. We 

[152] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



were all ticketed off as shrapnel cases, and 
probable recoveries, which latter detail is 
remarkable, since the most slightly injured 
in the four had twelve wounds, and there 
were sixty odd shell fragments or shrapnel 
balls collectively imbedded in us. The 
head nurse told me that I had about twenty 
wounds. Afterward her count proved con- 
servative. More accurate and later returns 
showed twenty-two bullets and shell frag- 
ments in my leg. 

We were fairly comfortable in the ambu- 
lance, and I, especially, had great relief 
from the fact that the nurse had strapped my 
leg in a sling attached to the top of the vehi- 
cle. We smoked cigarettes and chatted 
cheerfully, exchanging congratulations on 
having got "clean ones," that is, wounds 
probably not fatal. The artillery officer 
told me he had been supporting our bat- 
talion, that morning, with one of the "sacri- 
fice batteries." A sacrifice battery, I might 
explain, is one composed of field pieces 
which are emplaced between the front and 
support lines, and which, in case of an at- 

[1531 



BEST 0' LUCK 



tack or counter attack, are fired at point- 
blank range. They call them sacrifice bat- 
teries because some of them are wiped out 
every day. This officer said our battalion, 
that morning, had been supported by an en- 
tire division of artillery, and that on our 
front of four hundred yards the eighteen 
pounders, alone, in a curtain fire which 
lasted thirty-two minutes, had discharged 
fifteen thousand rounds of high-explosive 
shells. 

I was impressed by his statement, of 
course, but I told him that while this was 
an astonishing lot of ammunition, it was even 
more surprising to have noticed at close 
range, as I did, the number of Germans they 
missed. Toward the end of our trip to Con- 
tay, we were much exhausted and pretty 
badly shaken up. We were beginning also 
to realize that we were by no means out of 
the woods, surgically. Our wounds had 
merely been dressed. Each of us faced an 
extensive and serious operation. We arrived 
at Contay, silent and pretty much depressed. 
For twenty-four hours in the Contay casu- 

[i54] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



alty clearing station, they did little except 
feed us and take our temperatures hourly. 
Then we were put into a hospital train for 
Rouen. 

Right here, I would like to tell a little 
story about a hospital train leaving Contay 
for Rouen — not the one we were on, but one 
which had left a few days before. The 
train, when it was just ready to depart with 
a full quota of wounded men, was attacked 
by German aeroplanes from which bombs 
were dropped upon it. There is nothing, 
apparently, that makes the Germans so fear- 
less and ferocious as the Red Cross emblem. 
On the top of each of the cars in this train 
there was a Red Cross big enough to be seen 
from miles in the air. The German aviators 
accepted them merely as excellent targets. 
Their bombs quickly knocked three or four 
cars from the rails and killed several of the 
helpless wounded men. The rest of the 
patients, weak and nervous from recent 
shock and injury, some of them half delir- 
ious, and nearly all of them in pain, 
were thrown into near-panic. Two of 

[i55] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



the nursing sisters in charge of the 
train were the coolest individuals present. 
They walked calmly up and down its length, 
urging the patients to remain quiet, direct- 
ing the male attendants how to remove the 
wounded men safely from the wrecked cars, 
and paying no attention whatever to the 
bombs which were still exploding near the 
train. I did not have the privilege of wit- 
nessing this scene myself, but I know that I 
have accurately described it for the details 
were told in an official report when the King 
decorated the two sisters with the Royal 
Red Cross, for valor in the face of the 
enemy. 

The trip from Contay to Rouen was a 
nightmare — twenty-six hours travelling one 
hundred and fifty miles on a train, which 
was forever stopping and starting, its jerky 
and uncertain progress meaning to us just 
hours and hours of suffering. I do not know 
whether this part of the system for the re- 
moval of the wounded has been improved 
now. Then, its inconveniences and imper- 
fections must have been inevitable, for, in 



156] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



every way afterward, the most thoughtful 
and tender care was shown us. In the long 
row of huts which compose the British Gen- 
eral Hospital at Rouen, we found ourselves 
in what seemed like Paradise. 

In the hut, which constituted the special 
ward for leg wounds, I was lifted from the 
stretcher on which I had travelled all the 
way from Poizers into a comfortable bed 
with fresh, clean sheets, and instantly I 
found myself surrounded with quiet, 
trained, efficient care. I forgot the pain of 
my wounds and the dread of the coming op- 
eration when a tray of delicious food was 
placed beside my bed and a nurse prepared 
me for the enjoyment of it by bathing my 
face and hands with scented water. 

On the following morning my leg was 
X-rayed and photographed. I told the sur- 
geon I thought the business of operating 
could very well be put off until I had had 
about three more square meals, but he 
couldn't see it that way. In the afternoon, 
I got my first sickening dose of ether, and 
they took the first lot of iron out of me. I 

[i57] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



suppose these were just the surface deposits, 
for they only got five or six pieces. How- 
ever, they continued systematically. I had 
five more operations, and every time I came 
out of the ether; the row of bullets and shell 
scraps at the foot of my bed was a little 
longer. After the number had reached 
twenty-two, they told me that perhaps there 
were a few more in there, but they thought 
they'd better let them stay. My wounds had 
become septic, and it was necessary to give 
all attention to drainage and cure. It was 
about this time that everything, for a while, 
seemed to become hazy, and my memories 
got all queerly mixed up and confused. I 
recollect I conceived a violent dislike for a 
black dog that appeared from nowhere, now 
and then, and began chewing at my leg, and 
I believe I gave the nurse a severe talking to 
because she insisted on going to look on at 
the ball game when she ought to be sitting 
by to chase that dog away. And I was per- 
fectly certain about her being at the ball 
game, because I saw her there when I was 
playing third base. 

[158] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



It was at this time (on November 28, 
1916, ten days after I had been wounded) 
that my father, in Lexington, received the 
following cablegram from the officer in 
charge of the Canadian records, in Eng- 
land: 

"Sincerely regret to inform you that Ser- 
geant Alexander McClintock is officially 
reported dangerously ill in No. 5 General 
Hospital, from gunshot wound in left thigh. 
Further particulars supplied when re- 
ceived." 

It appears that, during the time of my ad- 
ventures with the black dog and the inatten- 
tive nurse, my temperament had ascended to 
the stage when the doctors begin to admit 
that another method of treatment might 
have been successful. But I didn't pass out. 
The one thing I most regret about my close 
call is that my parents, in Lexington, were 
in unrelieved suspense about my condition 
until I myself sent them a cable from Lon- 
don, on December 15th. After the first- 
official message, seemingly prepared almost 
as a preface to the announcement of my de- 

[i59] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



mise, my father received no news of me 
whatever. And, as I didn't know that the 
official message had gone, I cabled nothing 
to him until I was feeling fairly chipper 
again. You can't have wars, though, with- 
out these little misunderstandings. 

If it were possible, I should say some- 
thing here which would be fitting and ade- 
quate about the English women who nursed 
the twenty-five hundred wounded men in 
General Hospital No. 5, at Rouen. But 
that power isn't given me. All I can do is 
to fall back upon our most profound Ameri- 
can expression of respect and say that my 
hat is off to them. One nurse in the ward 
in which I lay had been on her feet for 
fifty-six hours, with hardly time, even to eat. 
She finally fainted from exhaustion, was 
carried out of the ward, and was back again 
in four hours, assisting at an operation. And 
the doctors were doing their bit, too, in liv- 
ing up to the obligations which they consid- 
ered to be theirs. An operating room was 
in every ward with five tables in each. After 
the fight on the Somme, in which I was 

[160] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



wounded, not a table was vacant any hour 
in the twenty-four, for days at a time. Out- 
side of each room was a long line of stretch- 
ers containing patients next awaiting surgi- 
cal attention. And in all that stress, I did 
not hear one word of complaint from the 
surgeons who stood, hour after hour, using 
their skill and training for the petty pay of 
English army medical officers. 

On December 5th, I was told I was well 
enough to be sent to England and, on the 
next day, I went on a hospital train 
from Rouen to Havre. Here I was 
placed on a hospital ship which every 
medical officer in our army ought to 
have a chance to inspect. Nothing ingenu- 
ity could contrive for convenience and com- 
fort was missing. Patients were sent below 
decks in elevators, and then placed in swing- 
ing cradles which hung level no matter what 
the ship's motion might be. As soon as I 
had been made comfortable in my particu- 
lar cradle, I was given a box which had 
engraved upon it: "Presented with the com- 
pliments of the Union Castle Line. May 

[161] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



you have a speedy and good recovery." The 
box contained cigarettes, tobacco, and a 
pipe. 

When the ship docked at Southampton, 
after a run of eight hours across channel, 
each patient was asked what part of the 
British Isles he would like to be taken to 
for the period of his convalescence. I re- 
quested to be taken to London, where, I 
thought, there was the best chance of my see- 
ing Americans who might know me. Say, 
I sure made a good guess. I didn't know 
many Americans, but I didn't need to know 
them. They found me and made themselves 
acquainted. They brought things, and then 
they went out to get more they had forgotten 
to bring the first trip. The second day 
after I had been installed on a cot in the 
King George Hospital, in London, I sent 
fifteen hundred cigarettes back to the boys 
of our battalion in France out of my surplus 
stock. If I had undertaken to eat and drink 
and smoke all the things that were brought 
to me by Americans, just because I was an 
American, I'd be back in that hospital now, 

[162] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



only getting fairly started on the job. It's 
some country when you need it. 

The wounded soldier, getting back to 
England, doesn't have a chance to imagine 
that his services are not appreciated. The 
welcome he receives begins at the railroad 
station. All traffic is stopped by the Bob- 
bies to give the ambulances a clear way 
leaving the station. The people stand in 
crowds, the men with their hats off, while 
the ambulances pass. Women rush out and 
throw flowers to the wounded men. Some- 
times there is a cheer, but usually only 
silence and words of sympathy. 

The King George Hospital was built to 
be a government printing office, and was 
nearing completion when the war broke out. 
It has been made a Paradise for convales- 
cent men. The bareness and the sick sug- 
gestion and characteristic smell of the 
average hospital are unknown here. There 
are soft lights and comfortable beds and 
pretty women going about as visitors. 
The stage beauties and comedians come and 
entertain us. The food is delicious, and the 

[163] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



chief thought of every one seems to be to 
show the inmates what a comfortable and 
cheery thing it is to be ill among a lot of 
real friends. I was there from December 
until February, and my recollections of the 
stay are so pleasant that sometimes I wish I 
was back. 

On the Friday before Christmas there 
was a concert in our ward. Among the ar- 
tists who entertained us were Fay Compton, 
Gertrude Elliott (sister of Maxine Elliott), 
George Robie, and other stars of the Lon- 
don stage. After our protracted stay in the 
trenches and our long absence from all the 
civilized forms of amusement, the affair 
seemed to us the most wonderful show ever 
given. And, in some ways, it was. For in- 
stance, in the most entertaining of dramatic 
exhibitions, did you ever see the lady artists 
go around and reward enthusiastic applause 
with kisses? Well that's what we got. And 
I am proud to say that it was Miss Comp- 
ton who conferred this honor upon me. 

At about three o'clock on that afternoon, 
when we were all having a good time, one 

[164] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



of the orderlies threw open the door of the 
ward and announced in a loud voice that 
His Majesty, the King, was coming in. We 
could not have been more surprised if some 
one had thrown in a Mills bomb. Almost 
immediately the King walked in, accompan- 
ied by a number of aides. They were all 
in service uniforms, the King having 
little in his attire to distinguish him 
from the others. He walked around, pre- 
senting each patient with a copy of "Queen 
Mary's Gift Book," an artistic little volume 
with pictures and short stories by the most 
famous of English artists and writers. 
When he neared my bed, he turned to one 
of the nurses and inquired: 

"Is this the one?" 

The nurse nodded. He came and sat at 
the side of the bed and shook hands with 
me. He asked as to what part of the United 
States I had come from, how I got my 
wounds, and what the nature of them were, 
how I was getting along, and what I par- 
ticularly wished done for me. I answered 
his questions and said that everything I 

[165] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



could possibly wish for had already been 
done for me. 

"I thank you," he said, "for myself and 
my people for your services. Our gratitude 
cannot be great enough toward men who 
have served us as you have." 

He spoke in a very low voice and with no 
assumption of royal dignity. There was 
nothing in the least thrilling about the inci- 
dent, but there was much apparent sincerity 
in the few words. 

After he had gone, one of the nurses asked 
me what he had said. 

"Oh," I said, "George asked me what I 
thought about the way the war was being 
conducted, and I said I'd drop in and talk 
it over with him as soon as I was well 
enough to be up." 

There happened one of the great disap- 
pointments of my life. She didn't see the 
joke. She was English. She gasped and 
glared at me, and I think she went out and 
reported that I was delirious again. 

Really, I wasn't much impressed by the 
English King. He seemed a pleasant, tired 

[166] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



little man, with a great burden to bear, and 
not much of an idea about how to bear it. 
He struck me as an individual who would 
conscientiously do his best in any situation, 
but would never do or say anything with the 
slightest suspicion of a punch about it. A few 
days after his visit to the hospital, I saw in 
the Official London Gazette that I had been 
awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. 
Official letters from the Canadian headquar- 
ters amplified this information, and a notice 
from the British War Office informed me 
that the medal awaited me there. I was 
told the King knew that the medal had been 
awarded to me, w T hen he spoke to me in the 
hospital. Despite glowing reports in the 
Kentucky press, he didn't pin it on me. 
Probably he didn't have it with him. Or, 
perhaps, he didn't consider it good form to 
hang a D. C. M. on a suit of striped, pre- 
sentation pajamas with a prevailing tone of 
baby blue.* 

* Editor's Note. — The medal was formally presented to 
Sergt. McClintock by the British Consul General, in New- 
York City, on August 15, 1917. 



[167] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



While I was in the King George Hos- 
pital I witnessed one of the most wonderful 
examples of courage and pluck I had ever 
seen. A young Scot, only nineteen years 
old, McAuley by name, had had the greater 
part of his face blown away. The surgeons 
had patched him up in some fashion, but he 
was horribly disfigured. He was the bright- 
est, merriest man in the ward, always jok- 
ing and never depressed. His own terrible 
misfortune was merely the topic for humor- 
ous comment with him. He seemed to get 
positive amusement out of the fact that the 
surgeons were always sending for him to do 
something more with his face. One day he 
was going into the operating room and a 
fellow patient asked him what the new op- 
eration was to be. 

"Oh," he said, "I'm going to have a cab- 
bage put on in place of a head. It'll grow 
better than the one I have now." 

Once in a fortnight he would manage to 
get leave to absent himself from the hos- 
pital for an hour or two. He never came 
back alone. It took a couple of men to 

[168] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



bring him back. On the next morning, he 
would say: 

"Well, it was my birthday. A man must 
have a few drinks on his birthday." 

I was discharged from the hospital in the 
middle of February and sent to a comfort- 
able place at Hastings, Sussex, where I 
lived until my furlough papers came 
through. I had a fine time in London at 
the theatres and clubs pending my depart- 
ure for home. When my furlough had ar- 
rived, I went to Buxton, Derbyshire, where 
the Canadian Discharge Depot was located 
and was provided with transportation to 
Montreal. I came back to America on the 
Canadian Pacific Royal Mail steamer, 
Metagama, and the trip was without inci- 
dent of any sort. We lay for a time in the 
Mersey, awaiting word that our convoy was 
ready to see us out of the danger zone, and 
a destroyer escorted us four hundred miles 
on our way. 

I was informed, before my departure, that 
a commission as lieutenant in the Canadian 
forces awaited my return from furlough, 

[169] 



BEST 0' LUCK 



and I had every intention of going back to 
accept it. But, since I got to America, 
things have happened. Now, it's the army 
of Uncle Sam, for mine. I've written these 
stories to show what we are up against. It's 
going to be a tough game, and a bloody one, 
and a sorrowful one for many. But it's up 
to us to save the issue where it's mostly right 
on one side, and all wrong on the other — and 
I'm glad we're in. I'm not willing to quit 
soldiering now, but I will be when we get 
through with this. When we finish up 
with this, there won't be any necessity for 
soldiering. The world will be free of war 
for a long, long time — and a God's mercy, 
that. Let me take another man's eloquent 
words for my last ones : 



Oh! spacious days of glory and of grieving! 

Oh ! sounding hours of lustre and of loss; 
Let us be glad we lived, you still believing 

The God who gave the Cannon gave the Cross. 

[170] 



A VISIT FROM THE KING 



Let us doubt not, amid these seething passions, 
The lusts of blood and hate our souls abhor : 

The Power that Order out of Chaos fashions 
Smites fiercest in the wrath-red forge of War. 

Have faith ! Fight on ! Amid the battle-hell, 
Love triumphs, Freedom beacons, All is well. 

(Robert W. Service, "Rhymes of a Red Cross 
Man.") 



THE END. 



[171] 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: .^ 2001 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATH 

«< ThnnrM PnrV Driuft 



